Icarus. (31 page)

"It's Joanie. And I think I might understand, Jackie. Over thirty years later, I'm still wonderin' what would have happened if I'd gotten to the seventeenth floor one minute earlier."

There was a strange silence between them now, a silence of shared grief and loss and understanding.

"You'll never know, Jackie," Dom finally said softly. "You can't go around blaming yourself."

"No, you're right. Neither of us will ever know. But that doesn't make it any better. In some ways it makes it a lot worse. Because I don't just blame myself for what happened, I feel guilty that I'm the one who survived." Jack put the knife down now, jabbed it into the butcher block so it stood straight up. He took a deep breath. "At least with my mother, we know what happened. It was crazy, sure, but there was closure. With Caroline we never found the guy. He disappeared without a trace. I mean, no one could find him. How's that possible? Police, the private detectives I hired. They said it was random. Which means there was no logic to it. So there were no real connections, no clues. No real motive, no idea how he did what he did. That's what I have to live with. Never knowing what really happened or why. Or if anything could have been done to stop it… And then this thing with Kid. Dom, you knew him, too. You saw him grow up. You know he couldn't have jumped off that building. I spent almost every day with him this past year. Working with him, talking to him, understanding him. And he did something extraordinary. He healed me. He took away my pain. In a lot of ways, he brought me back to life. And I think I owe him something. Something more than what he's getting from everybody else right now."

"And what?" Dom said in his low growl. "You think that findin' out what really happened to Kid is gonna bring Caroline back? Or give you peace of mind? What the fuck's gonna happen? Kid'll come back from that fuckin' hole in that cemetery to thank you?"

"No, I don't think I can bring Caroline back. Or Kid. And, no, I don't think there's any magic that'll change the past. But I think what I can do is try to understand it. And that's what I want right now. I want the truth. I need the truth. I need to understand something that right now makes no sense to me. Once I find out, then I'll worry about what happens after that."

"Okay, Jackie. I give you all this. I don't know exactly what the hell you re talkin about, but I'll give you that you re makin' some sense. Some. But what are you gonna do? You gonna suddenly turn into a middle-aged superhero and go around and find a killer? I mean, what the hell are you gonna do?"

"I've been giving this a lot of thought," Jack said. "Here's what I think happened. Kid had this 'team,' that's what he called it. Four or five women he was seeing. It was another side of him, one we never saw, and it was a strange side. It was a strange world he was straddling. He told me a lot about them. Some of them were into drugs and some had dark things in their past and he was afraid of some of them. He thought they were dangerous and from what he told me, it sounded like they were. It's what he liked about them."

"Jesus, Jackie…"

"McCoy told me that there was a woman with Kid right before he died. In his apartment. I think it was one of his team. And I think she killed him. All I want to do is see if I can find out who these women are. Find out which ones really are dangerous. And which ones might have killed him. Had the motive, had the opportunity. Then I'll go to McCoy, with some evidence, and turn it over to her. And if I'm wrong, if he really did kill himself, then even that's something. Then maybe I'll be able to understand that." When Dom stayed quiet, didn't seem to have any response, Jack said, "I'm starting to think that when you get older it all comes down to the same thing: endings. Everything ends, one way or the other. And I'm not even looking for a happy ending, because when you think about it, there's no such thing, really, as a happy ending. I'm just looking for an ending, Dom. That's all I'm doing."

"Will you promise me one thing?" Dom asked, frowning even more than usual. When Jack nodded, the one-armed man in front of him said, "I may be older than shit but I still know a thing or two about the streets. So let me help you if you get into any trouble."

"Trouble?" Doing his best Bogart, Jack winked and added, "Trouble's my middle name." Then, when he saw how serious Dom was, he touched the old man on the shoulder. "My whole life," Jack said slowly, "people I've loved have died around me. And I've never been able to understand why. They've died and I've survived. Just once, I want to find out why. If you want to help, you old bastard, it's more than okay with me."

As Jack Keller stood in front of the building at 487 Duane Street, the only thing he could think of was that he must have the wrong address. The late-afternoon sun was bright and the glare made him squint as he stared up. He was clutching the envelope that Kid had mailed to him and he looked back down at Kid's handwritten return address. He matched it up once again to the number on the twenty-story red-brick building for the third time and, for the third time, it was a match. He put his finger to the buzzer that had the word "Super" printed to its left and rang.

It took several minutes for the superintendent to make his way to the front of the building. He didn't come out the front door but from around the corner. He had a slight accent, Jack thought Russian, and he wore overalls that were covered with paint. Peeking out of one of the overall pockets was a tattered paperback copy of Beckett's The Unnamable. He seemed impatient and Jack wondered if it was to get back to work or to get back to his near impenetrable choice of reading material.

Jack had rehearsed his story in his mind several times, even once in front of his bathroom mirror, but now, translating it into real life, it sounded forced and hollow. He hoped that was just because he'd practiced it so many times.

"I know this is out of the ordinary," he told the super. "But I saw the story in the paper about the suicide."

"Yeah, it was horrible," the super said. The way he said "horrible" convinced Jack it really was a Russian accent. "I was here. You a reporter?"

Jack was tempted to say yes, to improvise a whole new tale, but then he decided to stick with his original plan and see what happened. "No," he said. "It's a little more ghoulish than that – I'm a New Yorker. I'm desperate to live down here and I figured the apartment's free now."

"You want me to show you the dead guy's apartment?" the super snorted.

"That's right," Jack told him.

The super shook his head, almost in admiration. "You gotta go through the agency," he told Jack. "I'd like to help you, but…"

"I've called them already." Jack was prepared for this. "But it's not available yet. I guess there are some legal entanglements." That was a lie, of course. He hadn't called any agency. In fact, the story he'd seen in the paper didn't even give the exact address of the building – a detail which he hoped the super wouldn't realize.

"Well, there you go."

"But that means nobody else has seen it either. I figure this'll give me a head start. If I like it, I can just call the office and make an offer. Sight unseen, so to speak."

"It's a good plan," the super said. "You're a sick fuck and I like that. But I can't help you."

"How about for twenty bucks?" Jack asked. "All I want is a few minutes to look around the apartment."

"Sorry."

"How about a hundred dollars?"

The super cocked his head to the side now. "A hundred bucks to see the apartment?"

"That's right."

"Hey," the super said, "who am I to stop you from getting the place of your dreams?"

– "-"-"THE SUPER TOOK Jack up in the elevator to the penthouse apartment. They stepped out of the elevator and the super steered Jack to the right.

"Two apartments on this floor," he said. "Most of the others have three or four. Some even have five."

He took out a large ring of keys, found a master, and inserted it into the lock. The door swung open and the super stepped aside. Jack stepped into the apartment, stopped cold the moment he crossed the threshold.

"There's got to be some mistake," he said.

"What kinda mistake?"

"The man who… who fell… did you know him?"

"'Course I knew him. He lived here."

"Demeter. That was his name, right?"

"Yeah. Kid," the super said. "Everybody called him Kid."

"And he lived here?"

"Mister, you want to see the apartment or not? This is the place and I only got a few minutes."

The sun coming through the curtains played tricks with the light. The room was covered in shifting shadows. But as Jack stared, one thing was very clear: he was standing in an extraordinary apartment. One that was way beyond Kid's financial means.

Jack stepped through the small entryway to find himself in an enormous living room. The floors were thick pine planks and they had been sanded and then pickled with an off-white paint so it felt as if you were walking on clouds. The furniture, too, was mostly white. Two enormous easy chairs that looked like they came from Shabby Chic. Two full-sized couches covered in a linen with a fine and elaborately stitched pattern. Arranged on built-in, handmade oak bookshelves stood colorful Chinese vases and small modern sculptures. The artwork on the walls was modern, too, several abstract nudes. A few boxes stood in one corner, packed up, some taped shut with industrial tape, some still open. Kid's belongings, Jack thought. Someone's packing up Kid's stuff.

But who?

"You gonna look at the rest of the apartment," the super said now, "or you just wanna take it after seeing the living room?"

Jack turned to him and very quietly said, "I'll give you another hundred dollars if you give me half an hour in the apartment."

"Hey," the man said, taken aback. "I don't know… what's the story here?"

"No story," Jack told him. "And I'll make it five hundred. Five hundred dollars cash if you let me have half an hour alone."

The super stepped away from Jack, scrutinizing him. "I don't know if I can do that. Lotta valuables in here. Lotta valuable shit."

"I'm not going to steal anything," Jack told him. "If you want, you can wait right outside the front door. You can search me when I come out. I'm not interested in taking anything."

"What exactly is it you're interested in?"

"Privacy. Half an hour. You want the money?"

This time the super didn't hesitate. "Pal, I always want the money." He put his hand out, Jack handed him five one-hundred-dollar bills, and the guy headed for the front door.

"Wait a second," Jack said. And when the super stopped, he asked, "What's the rent on this apartment?"

"It's not a rental, pal. We're co-op."

"You're saying Kid owned this place?"

"All I'm saying is that I'll be in the lobby while you're in here. And I will search you when you come out. If you're not down in thirty minutes, I'll come up and get you. I could get fired for this, you know."

Jack didn't even respond and the super let himself out, closing the door behind him.

Jack stared for another few moments, still stunned by the splendor of the living room before him, then realized he didn't have a lot of time to waste, so he began a tour of the apartment.

The next room he entered was the master bedroom. The only phrase that Jack could come up with that would do it justice was a rather crude one: he was standing in the middle of one giant fuck palace. There was a huge round bed, covered with large pillows, and even larger pillows were strewn all over the floor. There was thick, plush carpeting, a pale gold, but it was barely visible underneath all the pillows. To the right of the bed was a round glass table with a lamp on it. The lamp shade was thick and crenellated, also beige. Jack guessed that it was more to lend atmosphere than to provide usable light. Across the room from the bed was a big-screen TV mounted into a console with enormous speakers built into either side. To the left of the television, resting only on the carpet, no table, was a CD/stereo system. A very expensive one, in fact. The exact same system Jack had in his own apartment.

He started to leave the room, stopped, went over to the large closet to the right of the TV. It was stuffed with perfectly tailored Armani suits and dress shirts. The shirts were in five different colors – white, light blue, light gray, charcoal and black – and each color grouping had five identical shirts arranged together. There were also about twenty Banana Republic T-shirts, also in different colors, hung up and pressed. Six or seven pairs of Bruno Magli shoes lined the closet floor, along with three pairs of Nikes.

Jesus, Jack thought. Pat Riley could go shopping in this place.

And then his next thought: Who paid for all this?

He heard something then, a squeaky floorboard, and he quickly shut the closet door. He shook his head – what difference did it make if the closet was open or shut? He was in this apartment on false pretenses, he was probably committing a crime just by being in here now – and listened. But the sound was gone. He walked back into the living room, glanced around. Nothing. No one had come in. Doesn't take long to get paranoid, does it, he thought. How the hell do burglars do this for a living? To be on the safe side, he walked to the front door and peered through the peephole. He had heard something. The young couple across the hall were carrying groceries into their apartment and laughing. He could hear the elevator door slide shut and the elevator head back down to the lobby. He shrugged off his attack of nerves and began to explore the rest of the apartment.

There was a second bedroom, set up as a miniature health club. Almost all free wall space was mirrored, which gave the room a slightly surreal appearance and also emphasized the vanity that went into its design. The equipment was almost identical to what Kid had installed in Jack's apartment, as was the layout. There were three seats, one for benching, one for incline presses, and a flat one that could be used for almost any exercise. There was a slant board that attached to pegs built into a wall. There was a row of dumbbells, resting on custom-built holders that ran under and along the length of the windows on one wall. There was a full-sized barbell and a specialized one for bicep curls. There was a Universal leg-lift machine as well as one for benching and incline benching. There was a state-of-the-art StairMaster, a treadmill, and a VersaClimber, which Jack did not have at home. There was nothing in the room other than the equipment. Nothing that seemed personal or relevant to what Jack was looking for – whatever the hell it was he was looking for – so he ran his hand lightly over some of the weights, trying to figure out how Kid could have afforded all this, then he moved on to check out the kitchen and dining room.