Brainquake Page 11

  “She?”

  He nodded.

  “How good a friend?”

  “She sent me to the doctor.”

  “She knows you’re sick?”

  “Wants to help me.”

  “Still. You can’t tell her about me.”

  Paul opened his mouth but didn’t say anything.

  “If you tell her, they’ll kill both of us. I don’t want my baby brought to an orphanage by a cop.”

  “I won’t tell her.”

  “It will be dangerous for you to see me again.”

  “I have to.”

  “I know,” Michelle said.

  At that instant, Al and Eddie came around the bend. They walked over to the bench, stood in front of Paul and Michelle.

  “I told you guys already,” said Michelle, “I’m not—”

  “But you are, Mrs. Troy,” said Eddie. “You most certainly are. You are the widow of the late Frankie Troy, God rest his soul, and who else are we supposed to talk to about the money Frankie owed us?”

  Paul stood.

  “You can sit down again, big boy,” Eddie said, letting his suit jacket fall open and the gun at his hip show. “Unless you’d enjoy a 45-caliber enema.”

  Michelle put a hand on Paul’s side, holding him back. To Eddie she said, “If you don’t stop harassing me, I’m sure that officer will be glad to discuss it with you…”

  Al and Eddie looked in the direction she was nodding, saw the approaching cop. Eddie backed off, buttoned his jacket. “Get the money, Mrs. Troy.”

  They walked off.

  Paul started after them, but Michelle pulled him back to the bench.

  “Forget it…they’re just con men, leeches…it’s because my picture was in the paper, they figure I’ll be an easy mark. They claim Frankie owed them and how would I know he didn’t.” She kissed his hands covering hers.

  “I don’t know,” Paul said finally. “Maybe Frankie did owe money. They sounded serious.”

  “Trust me, Paul.”

  “I do,” he said. “But I don’t want you to be alone when they come again.”

  “So come over.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Whenever you want to.”

  “Dinner?”

  “Bring some food. I’ll cook it.”

  Paul glanced at his watch. “Dr. Adson.”

  She squeezed his hand for luck, they kissed and he left.

  Al and Eddie followed him to his parked taxi, watched him get behind the wheel and drive off.

  22

  “Given any thought to finding a new job?” said Dr. Adson.

  Paul shook his head.

  “Got to get your nerves settled and stop your brain from pressure it doesn’t need. Driving a cab in this city’s no way to do that.”

  Just to be saying something, Paul said, “I’ll look.”

  “I know a man running the cemetery north of Van Cortland Park. Plenty of quiet out there.”

  Paul shook his head.

  “Not for you? All right. Another friend of mine works in the Public Library, at 42nd and Fifth. Microfilm department. Quiet. No stress. No customers barking at you. I can ask him. If it’s no dice, I’ll ask around.”

  Paul nodded. He knew Dr. Adson was trying to be helpful. But it wasn’t his job that caused his brainquake, any more than being a bookie had caused his father’s.

  He looked across the desk at a row of X-rays of his brain resting on an illuminated stand.

  “A few questions I didn’t ask the last time, just for the record. Okay?”

  Paul nodded.

  “At any time do you suffer poor balance?”

  “Sometimes. Heights.”

  “You feel unsteady in high places?”

  Paul nodded.

  “Elevators?”

  Nodded.

  “What about muscle stiffness?”

  “No.”

  “Tremor? The shakes?”

  “In elevators.”

  “Short-term memory problems?”

  “No.”

  “Speech problems you were born with, so let’s put that aside. You don’t have Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. I found some signs of degenerative brain disorder.” Dr. Adson leaned across the desk and, with the dead end of his cigar, tapped an X-ray on the stand. “But you don’t have a tumor.”

  He leaned back in his chair.

  “I’ve got to find the jackal, see what it looks like when it’s attacking the good cells.”

  Dr. Adson swept a big blow-up photo from under the sea of X-rays and held it up. Paul stared at his own live brain, in color.

  “Any more attacks?”

  “One. Bad.”

  “Oh?”

  “I saw someone I know put a gun in a baby’s mouth. Threw a bottle at her. The bottle broke.”

  “That ended the attack?”

  Paul nodded. “Broken bottle was on the floor.”

  “You actually threw the bottle while in your brainquake? Didn’t just imagine it?”

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Adson stood up, struck a match, held the flame over the end of his dead cigar, then put the cigar in his mouth, puffing slowly, pacing across to the big window facing skyscrapers, keeping his back to Paul. Smoke curled up.

  “Last summer a woman I’d treated was lying in her bed, dreaming she burned down a sailboat, and she woke up standing on a dock to find that a sailboat was burning. She told the police it started in a dream.” Dr. Adson turned. “It can happen. Tragedies can happen. Luckily certain cells in your brain make you step out of your hallucinations. As yours did, apparently. But not soon enough if that bottle got thrown.”

  “Can you help me?”

  “Eventually, I hope. Right now I’m stymied.”

  “You giving up?”

  “No, Paul,” Dr. Adson said. “Being stymied and giving up are not the same.”

  23

  Lights in the window of the butcher shop made Paul stop his van. He pulled out his bag. He went into the butcher shop, bought lamb chops, bought wine in the liquor store a few doors away, climbed back behind the wheel, put gun and bag back into the compartment, drove toward his last drop of the day.

  It was getting dark. Like a legless man develops powerful arm muscles, Paul had developed a powerful sense of direction. He took pride in always using different streets, alleys, shortcuts for every drop. And this drop was special to him. He could find his way there blindfolded.

  It was a pet shop and the woman there ran her own miniature zoo. It was the only drop that made Paul want to stay longer, to look at the fish, puppies, kittens, rabbits. He only ever spent ten seconds. But he savored those ten seconds. He especially liked one big bowl of goldfish, like the one the Boss had on her desk.

  The woman there would start talking every time he came in. She talked a lot in those ten seconds. Paul didn’t mind the woman talking that much. He liked anyone who took care of so many pets.

  He stopped the van, looked around. He was near the George Washington Bridge. He should be across town near the East River. What was he doing so far uptown on the other side of Manhattan?

  Never had he lost his sense of direction. Never. That’s what made him one of the Boss’ best bagmen. The Boss told him that many times because she knew it made him feel proud.

  His head began to throb. The ache increased. He waited to hear the flute. He didn’t hear it. He waited. Any second the brainquake would hit. He waited. The throbbing in his head continued. It was a different kind. Like a drop of water falling in the sink, a drop at a time.

  Dr. Adson had asked him about short-term memory. Maybe the throbbing was that. Maybe it was the first sign that he had one of the diseases Dr. Adson talked about. But that couldn’t be. Dr. Adson said it wasn’t either of those diseases.

  It was the jackal. The jackal was just attacking him in a different way now. It was slowly beginning to eat up the healthy cells in his brain. He fought the helplessness inside him. He touched his face. He was not sweating.
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  Then inside, the chill began to go away. He knew how he got lost. He was going to see Michelle tonight. That was why he got the lamb chops.

  His need for Michelle was strong enough to make him forget how to get to that pet shop. Without speeding, he turned back. Every block he passed, his memory was getting sharper. By the time he reached the pet shop, he was excited about what had happened.

  The chill meant Michelle blocked out everything in his brain.

  In the back of the pet shop, the woman took a new fishbowl out of a big cardboard box. The bowl was very heavy. Paul helped her put it down gently in the corner. She never stopped talking as he transferred packages of cash from his bag into the cardboard box.

  He parked his van in the small garage near Police Headquarters, carried the wine and lamb chops to his taxi. The seat of the taxi was more comfortable, and it made no difference to the Boss what vehicle he used to drive to his shack after a day’s work.

  As he shaved in the shack’s tiny bathroom, he looked in the mirror. He stopped shaving. He looked into his eyes for a long time. The more conscious he was of how blank they were, the more uncomfortable he became.

  She accepted his cipher face. But for how long? One day she would get tired of looking at his dead eyes.

  He was aware that people had all kinds of expressions. Their faces told him when they were happy or sad or angry. The muscles of their faces were healthy. His were not.

  Maybe he was born without them. He could never know if anything in his eyes changed when Michelle made him happy unless he was looking into his eyes when she made him happy.

  He thought of Michelle now, of her smiling at him, of her kissing him, and laughed inside. Laughed loud.

  But in the mirror his eyes remained blank.

  He put the razor down and pulled back the corners of his mouth to form a smile. The mouth and the lather made him look funny. He needed a way to see if there was a change in his eyes when something unusual happened. With lather still on his face, he got his gun. He held it close to his head, muzzle pointed at the bathroom ceiling, and fired one shot as he stared at his eyes.

  The gunshot jerked his body, but his eyes remained blank.

  Under the shower he thought about asking Dr. Adson. He was a brain doctor, but maybe he knew some other doctor who specialized in face muscles. It shouldn’t be hard to X-ray his face muscles and fix them to react like they did in everybody else’s face.

  Or maybe when Dr. Adson cut out the jackal, maybe everything else would work. His face muscles. His way of talking.

  The sound he made when he talked. He heard Michelle and the Boss and Dr. Adson. He heard what sounds they made. Even when the woman in the pet shop talked so much. He heard her words very clearly.

  As he dried himself, he experimented.

  “How are you, Michelle?” he said aloud, hearing each word like faintly scratching sandpaper.

  He said “How” over and over again, trying to lose the scratching sound. He said “are” over and over again. The scratching only grew more pronounced.

  When he repeated words to his mother and father, they never said anything about the scratching. They only concentrated on the words. At that time the sound must have been stronger. How they must have suffered hearing those sounds.

  24

  10 P.M. in his steamroom was Hampshire’s hour for meditation. He was satisfied with life. His throne was the lowest wooden bench as sweat poured through his pores.

  As a boy of wealth, he bought a very expensive brown calfskin parchment once only to learn it was just colored paper that looked aged. He laughed about it now but had been humiliated then.

  These words became his bible: There’s a sucker born every minute. Barnum was right to never give a sucker an even break. The sucker was usually the one that was out to outsuck you.

  His first act in business was to successfully outsmart the carnival operator in a shell game. He was nine years old.

  He rose from the wooden bench, threw more water on the coals.

  Throughout his career he had remained faithful to his father’s last words to him: “Crime pays.”

  They weren’t the old man’s last words, just his last words to his son. He’d lived another decade. But they’d never spoken again.

  Like most land and steel barons, his father was a crook to remember. Inheriting millions from him, Hampshire made them make more millions. There was no fun in making honest millions.

  The breed he admired, to which he was happy to belong, was the men who pulled the strings. Like Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall who swindled the treasury of New York City out of millions. What a great President he would have made. Skim off the top, leave some for the people.

  When Hampshire made his first illegal million, he felt clean. When he went full steam from nationwide to international crime, it made him feel cleaner. The more suckers, the better he felt. Without suckers, he’d starve for life.

  Money meant nothing if you weren’t living.

  * * *

  10 P.M. the Boss had dinner with Max at Dinty’s Chop House. The Boss told Max about Samantha’s progress, the latest specialists she was seeing. Max was happy for both of them.

  Suddenly the Boss blurted it out from left field.

  “Zookie’s been on my mind.”

  “Toy shop?”

  She nodded. “He pocketed a fifty thousand dollar drop to keep his kid alive. She’s got cancer.”

  Max sliced off another piece of steak, chewed it thoughtfully. “You should have called me.”

  “Then he’d be dead now.”

  “That’s right, Rebecca.” Another bite, a swallow of water. “You should’ve, but I guess I’m glad you didn’t. Zookie’s been with us a long time.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear you say.”

  “You cover the hole in that drop?”

  “Of course. Put fifty thousand of my own money in to balance the books.”

  “You fire him?”

  “How am I supposed to get my money back if I do that? Got to take it out of his pay.”

  “You trust him?”

  “It’s Zookie.”

  “You’re taking a hell of a chance,” Max said.

  “It’s only money.”

  “Not for him.”

  * * *

  10 P.M. Zara was in a vacuum. Not a single informer on her list could come up with even a minuscule clue. She even went outside her list to bribe, cajole, threaten stoolies on other cops’ shitlist. She was desperate. The gutter grapevine took advantage.

  Pay first, Lieutenant, then I’ll follow my hunch was the song sung by scum undependables milking her obsession with the case. Like a sheriff gathering a posse, she deputized workers on the streets, in mental clinics, in crack dens and homeless shelters. She bribed madams, pimps, whores known to service screwballs of every kind. It was ten o’clock and she was waiting for the phone to ring. Some canary would come through. Someone would have talked. Someone always did.

  * * *

  10 P.M. a red sedan pulled up in front of Michelle’s apartment building. Paul’s taxi was parked across the street. Al Cody got out and waited. Five minutes later, his brother Eddie pulled up in his green coupe and got out. They went into the apartment building, saw the baby carriage parked under the stairway, quietly climbed to the fourth floor.

  At Michelle’s door they listened. Eddie silently turned the knob. The door opened. He looked at Al just as surprised. They went in.

  Al closed the door without a sound. In the soft blue light coming from the kitchenette they saw red roses near the window, remains of lamb chops on two plates, bottled water near a halffilled glass, a wine bottle near an empty wine glass, pot of coffee, two cups.

  They passed the baby sleeping in the crib near the bedroom door, which was half-open. They stole into the bedroom. In the half-light they saw Paul’s jacket neatly hanging on the back of a chair. His trousers folded over it. On the trousers were Paul’s shirt and shorts.

  Naked in
bed, Paul and Michelle were asleep. His arm was around her. Al took out his camera. Eddie took out his gun and cracked Paul across the face with his other hand. Paul opened his eyes as he sat up. Flash of camera bulb startled Paul but his face remained blank as Al took his picture.

  “That’s for collection insurance, Mr. Hard-On,” Eddie said. “Your wallet.”

  “My pocket.” Paul’s voice shook.

  Al was by Michelle’s side, one hand over her mouth. Her eyes popped out in terror.

  “Get it, Speedy Gonzales,” Eddie said.

  Michelle bit Al’s hand. He jerked it away. She screamed. Eddie leaned over. A slap across her face silenced the scream.

  “One more sound out of you, you chiseling cunt, I’ll throw your baby out the window without opening it up first.”

  Paul lifted the wallet out of his pocket. Eddie snatched it and, after some difficulty digging around one-handed, found the driver’s license.

  “Now we know where you hang up your used rubbers,” Eddie said. “What do you do to turn a buck?”

  “Drive taxi.”

  “The one down in front?”

  Paul nodded. Eddie slapped, then back-slapped, his face.

  “Didn’t hear you, Mr. Cocksman.”

  “Yes. Hack in front.”

  “What’s the meter reading of the widow in the sack?”

  “You know I don’t like dirty talk, Al,” Eddie said without turning to his brother. “Let’s stick to business.”

  He tossed the wallet in Paul’s face, then eyed Michelle. “Black Psycho’s holed up somewhere. Can’t find him, so we’ll talk business without him.”

  “We’re not welchers. We’ll give him his cut,” Al said.

  “We woke you up gently, Mrs. Troy. Didn’t bust your nose, didn’t even wake up the baby. You got two hours to dig up the ten grand owed us. We know from Frankie he gave you the whole twenty. All we want is our half. We’ll drop in at midnight. If you don’t have the money, Madonna and baby’ll stop breathing.”

  They left. Plunging into pants, jamming his feet into his shoes, Paul grabbed his gun from his jacket pocket, ran out, pounded down the four flights, streaked out the street door to see them driving off, one car behind the other.