Cold Night (Jack Paine Mysteries) (13 page)

Paine flipped on the light switch.

The thing Jimmy had been building was on his desk. The cops must have puzzled over that one. It was a mass of odd angles. It still looked as though it might be some sort of bridge when finished. Paine decided that that was his final guess.

Paine picked up the box. It was empty of pieces. Maybe the police had taken them. He turned the box over. There was no picture on the cover; stenciled across the blank cardboard were the words "Contents: 500 wood sticks." The box had been filled with little sticks of wood that Jimmy had randomly glued together. A practical joke.

Paine put the box down and went to Jimmy's filing cabinet. He pulled open the middle drawer. There, in the back, was the blue folder. Paine took it out and put it on the desk and sat down in front of it.

Inside the folder was a marble composition book, the kind kids buy for school. On the front cover, in the white rectangular section devoid of marbling, in florid script, was a large letter
J.

Paine opened the book.

Pasted in the upper right-hand corner of the first page was a wallet photo. It showed a plain, middle-aged woman with a lot of wear on her face. She was smiling sadly. She looked like the kind of woman who went to mass every day and sat in the back, then went to work for someone who didn't like her very much, then went home to cook and clean for a husband who didn't like her much, either. She looked like the kind of woman who wore a kerchief when she went out.

Below the photo, in a fastidiously neat hand, was written:

At dinnertime last night Anna's husband called from Syracuse. I knew why he was in Syracuse because I followed him there on Thursday and caught him with the camera. Blonde, dumb-looking, maybe thirty-four or thirty-five. Just a little overweight. Anna didn't want to believe it but when her husband called while I was there, after I had told her, after the way he talked to her on the phone, the excuses he gave, she knew. She began to cry when she hung up the phone, and I was embarrassed, but she let me hold her.

It was still early after that, and I took her to Rye Playland and we went on some rides and I made her have her picture taken. No one had ever taken her to Rye Playland before. Her husband never takes her anywhere. I can't understand that. I finally got her to smile on the third picture in the booth and I threw the other two out. The look on her face made me want to cry.

She let me sleep with her, and I know that it was mostly for revenge against her husband, but I don't care. I think I made her feel wanted. That made me feel good.

Under that, a couple of lines down, as if it had been added later or after much thought: "For a little while I didn't feel so alone."

Paine turned the page. The next one was blank, but his thumb felt the raised imprint of another picture on the following page. He turned, and there was another sad-eyed woman, a bleached blonde with enormous amounts of eye shadow on her booze-bloated face. This one, too, was smiling, but it looked as though it was not a natural thing for her to do and might collapse at any time.

Under the picture was a similar story to the first.

Paine went slowly through the rest of the notebook. Some entries were longer than others. Some were without photographs but this meant nothing because Paine could see them in his mind's eye. They were all the same woman, really.

You should do what I do, Jack.

A footstep sounded; Paine turned in time to see Barker stop in front of the shattered fragments of Jimmy's door. "What the hell are you doing?" Barker growled.

Paine closed the notebook and placed it on the desk.

"Did you break in here?" Barker demanded. His face was reddening and his voice rose to an unnaturally higher pitch.

"Yes."

"It comes out of your paycheck," Barker said.

As he fought to bring himself under control, his voice lowered. "That's fine," Paine said.

"I'm glad you think so. And as long as you're here now I'll tell you Gloria Fulman called me this evening. She told me about the way you acted up there and has decided to drop us. She wants us to drop the whole Grumbach case."

"We can't do that."

"Like hell we can't." He began to walk away from the doorway, stepping to avoid shards of glass, down the hall toward his office. "She's the client, Paine, and she doesn't want us anymore."

As Barker opened his office door Paine took him by the shoulder. The silk of his suit jacket felt like grease in Paine's grip.

"What about Rebecca Meyer?"

"Mrs. Fulman paid a kill fee for all the contracts. Rebecca Meyer agreed." He tried to pull away but Paine didn't let go of his shoulder.

"Don't you understand what she's doing?" Paine said. "She never had any intention of using us. This way it looks good. She hires me, gets me up there, provokes me, then fires me. And at the same time gets me away from the rest of the family."

Barker's gaze was coolly level. "You nearly ruined a five-thousand-dollar rug, which Mrs. Fulman graciously offered to forget. As for the rest, that's none of our business. Now let go of me, Paine."

"We can't drop that case."

"We already have." He tried to turn out of Paine's hold, into his office. Paine almost let him go but then he tightened his grasp on Barker's shoulder, pressing him back against the doorframe.

"You can't do that."

Alarm was rising into Barker's eyes. "Let go of me now, Paine," he said, "and
I
won't file assault charges." He reached with his free hand to straighten his tie.
"
I
don't think you want to push me."

"I'll push you, asshole." Paine moved his hand from Barker's shoulder to his back and pushed him into his office. He propelled Barker in a straight line through the maze of obstacles. The potted plant lurched over; a magazine rack was kicked to one side, spilling never-opened issues of
Architectural Digest
over the floor like a fan of cards. Barker turned to fight but Paine kept on him, shoving at his chest, and he stumbled backward.

He pushed Barker past his desk and down into the low chair on the other side of it. Sweat had broken out on Barker's face, and he had flushed into pink splotches. His tie was loosened and his handkerchief pushed out of its perfect fold in his breast pocket. His glasses were askew. His eyes had gone empty of everything but rabbit-like terror.

"You . . . wouldn't . . . dare . . ." he wheezed in a high voice.

"I might," Paine said. He loomed over Barker, then turned to the bookshelves. The hidden speakers were soothing out the Rachmaninoff Variations, a brave trill of piano answered by a muted shout from the orchestra.

"How do you turn it off?" Paine asked.

Barker was hyperventilating, breathing desperately into his cupped hands.

"Screw it," Paine said. He whisked aside unread rows of books until the tiny speakers, laid flush against the back corner walls, were revealed. He tried to dig his fingernails under the edge of the cloth grille and get them out, but they wouldn't move. Rachmaninoff mocked him, his piano questioning, orchestra answering.

"Shit!" Paine said, and then he punched his fist into the grille of the right speaker, crushing the paper cone. The left channel continued to play, piano without orchestra, and he punched it into silence also.

"You'll . . . pay for that, too," Barker panted. But his voice was much stronger and had regained its low, arrogant tone.

Paine turned. Barker's tie was knotted tightly at his throat, his handkerchief neatly creased in his breast pocket. The red mottling had vanished into his skin like muddy water into dry ground. He had polished his glasses and straightened them on his face. He held his cigarette case open and took one out, putting it demurely to his lips.

"I might kill you yet," Paine said, but his anger was deflated by the resurrected spectacle in front of him.

"I don't think you will." Barker got up, walked deliberately past Paine to the other side of his desk. He sat in his huge leather lounge chair and swiveled it. He lit his cigarette, leaned his chair back and regarded Paine from beneath a cloud of blue-gray smoke. He pointed his right, sapphire-ringed pinky at the silent speakers.

"Thank you," he said.

He began to laugh, one of his throaty, impolite sounds that grew enormous. "God, I'm happy no one was here to see the way you made me look. I haven't looked like Manny Barkewitz in thirty years."

He laughed again, humorlessly letting it trail into his words. "I don't mind telling you, Paine. I can't see that it matters. I used to be somebody named Manny Barkewitz."

He leaned his lounger back, staring at a space somewhere near the ceiling. "My father was a sanitation worker in Brooklyn." His eyes were hard and black through cigarette smoke. "My mother took in laundry. The house always stank of it." He sniffed derisively. "I don't think I'll ever forget that smell.

"My mother and father fought every night. He'd come home, drink one beer and start yelling. His clothes smelled so bad that even the odor of starch deserted the apartment until my mother could get him to take them off so she could wash them. 'All you do is clean!' he'd yell at her. Then he'd have another beer and then another. He kept on her all night, and she'd shout right back."

He leaned toward Paine, his chair gliding forward. "And I was the prize package." He smiled. "Little Manny. Runt of the block, runt of the litter. My two sisters were big like my old man, and they made me look like the weak little shit I was. They were on me all the time." His smile grew satisfied. "One of them is dead now, the other weighs two hundred and thirty pounds. Her husband calls her a pig.

"I got beat up three times a week. The jerks in the neighborhood took turns on me. It didn't mean shit to them or anybody that I was good with numbers, or knew every batting average in the Dodger lineup. These bastards
liked
beating the shit out of me. I lost my hearing in one ear for a year because I was stupid enough to try to fight back when one of them called my mother a bitch. He proved to me she was, because she didn't do a damn thing when I told her who had beat the side of my head into steak tartar. She said she took in that kid's mother's laundry, and that we needed the money. She also said they had money and could buy lawyers.

"So, Paine," Barker said, lifting a second cigarette out of his case, then snapping the case shut loudly, slipping it back into the silk-lined pocket of his jacket, "I learned that there are two kinds of cripples in the world. There are the ones that take the shit and don't do anything about it, and are owned by somebody else, and there are the ones who stop being cripples, and own themselves. My mother died from TB a year after that kid beat me up. The doctor said she worked herself to death. I got my hearing back at her funeral."

He put his hand behind his head, tilting the lounger back. Smoke drifted up behind him. His smile was as cold as his first cigarette. "That's why I hate cripples who don't stop being cripples. Because they don't own themselves. Like you, Paine. Everybody but you owns a piece of you. I own a piece of you." He waved at his smoke. "I'm not talking about the jail sentence I could get you for assaulting me. You could handle that, probably. Maybe even your friend Petty could get you out of it. I'm talking about something else."

He angled back his chair, pulling open a small drawer in his desk. Inside was a thin machine. He lifted it out. Also in the drawer was a row of microcassettes. He looked them over briefly, then selected one. He removed a cassette from the machine and put in the one he had chosen.

"We would have been able to hear this through the speakers you destroyed. I hope the little speaker in the machine does the tape justice."

He pushed a button, and there was the hiss of rolling tape. There was a beep followed by Paine's voice saying, "What made you look for me here?" Rebecca Meyer's voice, sounding distant but clear, answered, "I called you at home. Your wife answered and said you might be here."

There was more conversation, followed by rustling sounds and panting, and then Paine heard himself say, "I have a problem there." Barker's face was filled with amusement. "That's the way," Rebecca Meyer breathed heavily a few moments later. "That's it."

There was more. Paine listened to it for a few moments and then he looked at Barker's face and Barker smiled. He turned off the machine and the sounds went away.

"There's a copy of this tape in another place," Barker said, "so please don't destroy this machine. It's very expensive and you couldn't afford to pay for it." He removed the tape and replaced it with the one that had been in the machine. He put everything back into the drawer and closed it.

"As you realize," Barker said, "this tape is useless to me as far as you are concerned. But it could do considerable damage to Rebecca Meyer. She's in the middle of a rather delicate divorce at the moment. Her husband, Gerald, and his many lawyers would love to get hold of this."

"You and Gloria Fulman used it as a lever on Rebecca to get her to drop the case."

Barker shrugged. "Let's say they had a sisterly chat over the telephone." He plucked a third cigarette from his case, looked down at it. "You're fired, of course. I'd like you to leave immediately."