City Of Lies (37 page)

Harper was smiling. ‘You’re shitting me.’

Cathy shook her head. ‘Do I look like I’m shitting you?’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘Right. What possible reason could I have for telling you anything but the truth. I don’t have anything to prove to you, and I sure as hell don’t feel there’s any need to have you think of me as something other than I am. I’ve pretty much done everything you can do apart from hook for a living—’

‘Hook?’ Harper asked, even as it dawned on him what Cathy was saying.

‘Hook, right . . . like be a hooker. Jesus, you really are a little naïve aren’t you?’

Harper raised his band. ‘I’ve had three or four conversations with Duchaunak, and each time I’ve come away with a very different viewpoint about everybody I know here in New York, even people I don’t know—’

‘What has he told you? What has he told you about the people here in New York?’

‘Christ, loads of things, all manner of stuff, and I really don’t know whether to believe any of it or not.’

‘Such as?’

‘He’s never said anything direct . . . he never does. He makes inferences. He implies something, and then when I try to pin him down to something precise he says he doesn’t know.’

‘Which doesn’t seem a very substantial way of going about things, if you don’t mind me saying.’

Harper nodded. ‘It’s like trying to catch a smoke ring. He said something a while back, something about my mother having committed suicide. I was told she died of pneumonia, have always believed that, and Duchaunak implied that she committed suicide.’

‘And did she?’

Harper shrugged. ‘I went to see Evelyn and asked her about it.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘She confirmed it. She told me that my mother committed suicide because it was the only way she could escape from my father.’

Cathy Hollander looked at Harper for quite some time. Thirty seconds, perhaps a minute, and then she rose from the chair and walked towards him. She sat down on the bed beside him.

‘What else did he say?’ she asked. Her voice was gentle, sympathetic almost.

‘He said that my Uncle Garrett, Evelyn’s husband, the one I found dead, the one who shot himself in the head—’ Harper turned and looked at Cathy. He was very aware of her closeness. ‘Duchaunak said that such a suicide could very easily have been murder.’

Cathy was nodding slowly. She placed her hand on Harper’s arm; he was intensely aware of the pressure it created.

‘What else?’ she asked.

Harper shook his head. ‘I don’t remember. So many things . . . so many different things. Some of them he said like they were facts, other things like they were possibilities. I got confused . . . so confused.’

Harper felt Cathy pulling at his arm. He felt himself losing his balance as he sat there on the edge of the bed. He went sideways, just a few inches, but he came to rest with his head against her shoulder. He could smell her perfume, feel the sensation of her hair against his cheek, and for a moment he believed that he’d not been so close to a woman for as long as he could recall. He opened his mouth to speak again, to say something, anything, as if he felt he should continue talking to justify her gesture of empathy and consolation.

‘Ssshhh,’ she whispered.

Harper fell silent. He could hear her breathing, feel the beat of her heart. He felt her hand in his hair then, her fingertips grazing his cheek, and for a moment he closed his eyes.

‘You need to come and see Walt,’ she said. ‘You need to come and speak to Walt . . . Walt will tell you the truth about all of this, John. Walt knows everything that happened, and what Frank Duchaunak and Evelyn have told you is only the half of it.’

Harper turned slightly, once again felt her very real warmth and closeness.

Cathy moved her shoulder slightly and Harper eased back. Their faces were almost touching.

‘I don’t want—’ Harper started.

Cathy reached up her right hand and pressed her finger to his lips. She shook her head slowly. ‘Don’t think,’ she said. ‘Don’t talk . . . no more questions, okay? You’re going to get dressed and we’re going to go see Walt, and then things will start to make sense.’

Harper nodded, closed his eyes for a moment.

Cathy Hollander kissed his forehead. ‘It’s going to be alright,’ she said. ‘Trust me, John, it’s going to be alright.’

Harper looked up at her. He felt her nose graze his cheek. He moved his head slightly. He felt her tense up, just a fraction,
something almost imperceptible, but she did not withdraw. John Harper swallowed. His throat was tight. It was difficult to breathe. He raised his hand, felt it travel in slow-motion, and then he held his palm against her face. He moved forwards, felt her lips against his, and for a heartbeat they were connected. Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, he sensed her inhale and flinch. Just like that. She pulled back and his hand was no longer touching her face.

‘No,’ she said. ‘John . . . no . . .’

‘Yes,’ he whispered, and leaned forward once again. Their lips met, this time with greater pressure, and when he opened his mouth slightly he felt her yield in return. He reached behind her, held her against him, and then she started to struggle, raised her hand and pushed against his shoulder.

‘No, John!’ she snapped, and moved backwards. She stood up suddenly, and it seemed she would lose her balance.

Harper reached out to steady her but she brushed his hand aside and stepped back even further.

‘We can’t do this,’ she said, and in her eyes was such an expression of loss and hurt that Harper believed he had truly offended her.

He opened his mouth to speak, to say something that would make sense.

‘Don’t say anything,’ Cathy said. She walked towards the window and sat down in the chair.

Harper rose and took a step towards her. ‘I’m sorry—’

‘Don’t be . . . please don’t be sorry . . .’

Harper shook his head. ‘It’s my fault. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Just let it go, okay? I really don’t want you to think that—’

She laughed. ‘I’ve let it go,’ she said. ‘Okay? We’re okay on that? It never happened, alright?’

Harper nodded, felt he had to agree. Didn’t want to. Agreeing with her was the last thing in the world he wanted to do.

‘It’s gone,’ she said. She brushed her hair away from her face. ‘We’re going to go see Walt,’ she added. ‘Right now. We go see Walt, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Harper said.

‘Everything’s just as it was,’ Cathy said.

Harper smiled, reached for his jacket, and knew that everything was not just as it was; knew that it would never be the same again.

Not a word passed between them as they left the room.

Four minutes after noon.

Duchaunak opened his eyes. He could not remember if he had slept during the previous hour, but he vaguely recalled a sense of dreaming.

He lay there for a little while, and then he sat up, his legs over the edge of the mattress, the pillow in his lap.

He looked around the room: the TV and VCR in the corner, the shelving unit holding a stack of tapes, the titles of which he could read from where he sat:
The Misfits, Monkey Business, Niagara, Some Like it Hot, Bus Stop, How to Marry a Millionaire, The Prince and the Showgirl
. He had every one of them, and how many times he’d watched them he could never hope to recall.

Not a life really, is it?
he thought.
Not really, officially, what one would call ‘a life’
.

Frank Duchaunak lay back again. He looked at the ceiling. He wondered, just for a moment, what would become of him.

‘I need to go back,’ Harper said as they reached the end of the corridor.

Cathy frowned.

‘I need to get a tie.’

‘You what?’

Harper raised his hand, sort of pulled his unbuttoned shirt collar tight around his throat. ‘A tie,’ he said. ‘I want to get a tie.’

‘Okay,’ Cathy said. ‘I’ll wait here.’

Harper returned the way they’d come, unlocked and entered the room, walked to the chair near the window and from the back of it took a dark blue silk tie. He paused a moment to knot it, watching his hands do their work in the mirror beside the wardrobe.

He looked at himself. White shirt, cuff-links, a tailored suit, a
tie, a watch, clean shoes. He nodded. He tried to smile. He didn’t know what to think, and thus he tried to think nothing at all.

He left the room, walked back to where Cathy Hollander stood by the elevators.

‘You look good,’ she said. ‘You scrub up well.’

Harper shook his head, hesitated as if in thought, and then turned and looked at Cathy. The expression on his face was almost vacant. ‘Let’s go,’ he said quietly.

‘Right,’ she said, and took his arm.

‘He said nothing? Nothing at all?’

‘Right.’

‘Nothing at all is no fucking use to me, Sol.’

Neumann nodded. He sat facing Marcus. How many years he’s worked for the man, the number of times they’ve been faced with such situations, never once the faintest suggestion Marcus would direct his anger at him, but still Neumann was unnerved. Ben Marcus was unquestionably the most intense man he had ever known.

‘Who spoke to Mouse?’

‘Dietz and Reiff,’ Neumann replied.

‘You didn’t go down there?’

Neumann shook his head. ‘I couldn’t Ben, I had that other thing to handle.’

‘What thing?’

‘The thing with the cars . . . I had to make sure everything was ready with the cars.’

‘I should’ve sent Dietz to handle that and you should’ve seen Mouse.’ Marcus rose from the chair behind his desk and started pacing back and forth between the window and the door. He was silent for a minute or two, his brow furrowed, and then he paused and turned towards Neumann. ‘They killed him, right?’

Neumann nodded.

‘And you trust them for this . . . they wouldn’t get riled and kill the guy because he upset them?’

‘Hell Ben, they’re as good as they come. Remember that thing with the cop’s brother a while back? Ray and Albert handled that better than I could’ve done. They would’ve given Mouse every opportunity to tell them whatever he knew.’

‘So are we of the opinion that Mouse knew something and evaded them, or that Mouse knew nothing?’

Neumann shook his head. ‘I can’t guarantee anything, but I’d say the latter.’

Marcus walked back to his chair and sat down.

‘But hey, Mouse Jackson isn’t exactly at the top of the fucking totem pole in Lenny Bernstein’s crew, know what I mean?’

Marcus nodded. ‘I know, Sol, I know . . . but it seems strange that something as big as this wouldn’t have already filtered its way right through the ranks.’

‘Bigger it is the less people know, right? Something like this you have to keep under wraps right until the very moment it goes loose . . . otherwise, hell, who the fuck knows who’s got who on whose payroll?’

Ben Marcus sighed and leaned back against the chair. ‘So, we’re none the wiser; we really don’t have a clue who this guy is, this Sonny Bernstein. We get words that mean nothing. He’s this, he’s that, he’s the other, but nothing specific. If this guy’s the player that Freiberg says he is then he’s done one hell of a job of disappearing.’

Neumann shrugged his shoulders. ‘Heard of a guy one time . . . Cuban guy I think, worked for the Mafia for some fifty odd years. Name was Pereira . . . no, Perez, Ernesto Perez. Fifty years working for the Mafia, and when they finally got him there was no fucking record anywhere . . . no passport, no driving license, no Social Security number, nothing.’

‘What you saying, Sol, that this Sonny Bernstein works for the Mafia?’

‘I’m not saying anything, Ben, ’cept that people can exist without being on any official record.’

‘Official records I’m not concerned about. I just want to know if there’s some reliable word on this guy in Florida, anything that will tell me whether I’m up against an army or a fucking ghost.’

Neumann shook his head. ‘These things seem good, Ben. Victor’s done some good work. We got weapons, we got the vehicles being arranged. He’s got names of managers in each branch, the people with access codes. He’s done his usual straight-up job. The practice runs have gone well. People from our crew and Bernstein’s lot seem to be working together. Hey,
Sonny Bernstein is here, whoever the fuck he might be . . . seems to me everything’s going to roll forward just like you agreed with Lenny. Fact that we never intended to go through with the agreement is beside the fucking point now . . . way it seems, we could come out the other end of this thing with a great deal more than when we went in.’

‘I can’t deal with what
seems
to be, Sol. I need to know the facts; I need to know exactly what these people are going to do now Lenny’s in St Vincent’s.’

‘I think you’ve hit the problem right there, Ben,’ Neumann said. ‘I get the idea even
they
don’t know what they’re going to do.’

Marcus said nothing.

Neumann sat motionless.

‘And McCaffrey?’ Marcus finally asked.

Neumann hesitated, and then he shook his head.

Marcus closed his eyes. He inhaled slowly, exhaled again. ‘Nothing?’

‘We found the sister, the brother as well. We got nothing from either of them. Rumor has it McCaffrey’s dead.’

Marcus opened his eyes and looked at Neumann. ‘Rumor?’

‘Well—’

‘I want his head, Sol. I want McCaffrey’s head in a bag by the end of the day. I don’t know how many times this has to be ordered. Get me it now. I am
ordering
that McCaffrey be found.’

Neumann did not respond.

‘Go,’ Marcus said.

Neumann didn’t move.

‘
Now
, Sol . . . go now, and bring me this nigger’s head.’

‘Frank Duchaunak,’ Walt Freiberg said, ‘is basically a good man. Fact of the matter is that his heart is in the right place . . . difficulty is that his mind isn’t.’

Cathy smiled, glanced across the table at Harper, and seeing that he too had smiled she seemed to relax. They’d shared no more than a dozen words in the cab. Cathy had called Freiberg on his cellphone, arranged to meet him in a restaurant on West Third near the Judson Memorial Church. It was no longer snowing, but the drifts from an earlier fall had banked against the storefronts and curbs. ‘Feels like Christmas,’ Harper had said, and then turned and looked at her, his tiredness evident, his emotions frayed, his mind stretched at the seams, and she had reached out and touched his hand, and they seemed, perhaps, to be conspiratorial, to be on some similar wavelength, communicating with no words. She had nodded, half-smiled, glanced away and out through the window, and Harper had looked down, closed his eyes, and then silently exhaled. They were pretending. He knew that. Was aware that she knew it too. They had almost coincided for a moment in the hotel room, and then the moment had gone. Everything from this point forward would be varnished with a gloss of pretense.