The Railroad (29 page)

He seemed confused by my stare until it finally hit him. “Uh…yeah. Okay. I’m going to go away now. Have a good time. I’ll catch up with you later.”

Melinda giggled as we watched him push his way through the crowd. “You shut Steve up. Pretty amazing.”

“I’m surprised he even realized he’d put his foot in it. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. Eileen isn’t coming back.”

“I know you cared about her. I’m enough of an adult to know what I’m getting myself into.”

“Is there anyone here you want to talk to?”

She studied the crowed. “There’s Susan. I’ve done some work for this group. She’s kind of Steve’s pit bull. She’s broken down a lot of walls for us.”

“Let’s go.”

For a short time I felt like I was back in New York. Despite my business background, the crowd at parties back home was usually eclectic enough to include artists, political activists, and any number of people with cache. I spent the next hour or so discussing everything from 9/11 to music. I found out about the work that Steve had done with women in trouble.

It became a bit of a blur. Too many people, too much information. I wondered how I’d ever handled it in New York. Melinda began to fidget and I realized she hadn’t planned for a night where I spent all my time speaking to other people. As soon as I could, I disengaged myself from our current conversation and pulled her away.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “I thought you were having a good time.”

“I was…sort of. I’ve had my fill of this kind of…see and be seen party stuff. Remember I was a big wheel on the Street. And I didn’t want to waste the evening having no time to talk to you.”

She smiled sweetly. “You’re very nice. Just like Steve said. But I feel like I pushed you into this, coming here. I wanted to see you again.” She smiled shyly at me and then looked away.

“I’m glad I came, Melinda. I wanted to see you again. It’s just that my life isn’t exactly settled right now.”

“I know that. Look, we’re not going to have a good time here and I can see we won’t be able to talk. Do you want to go back to that same bar?”

I smiled. “What will Steve think?”

“Fuck Steve. OOPS! I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s okay. Let’s go.”             

We moved toward the door and I could see a few of Melinda’s friends staring at us curiously.

Hoping it would cause a stir, I took Melinda’s arm and led her toward the door.

We skirted the wall, trying to avoid the knots of humanity that filled the room. We happened to pass a small side door that gave a view of an ugly gravel-strewn parking lot at the back of the building. I only caught a glimpse as we went by, but I saw something that made my hackles rise.

It was Benoit handing Moskowitz an envelope. Not that I could see that well, but the envelope looked heavy. In my mind’s eye, I could see money in it. Even if I was wrong about the details, it didn’t look good.

Chapter Fifteen

I didn’t last long with Melinda. I kept thinking that whatever Moskowitz was doing, she could be involved. I couldn’t bring myself to really believe it, but I couldn’t ignore the possibility either. In the end I just pleaded fatigue and took her home. I think she was a little insulted, but under the circumstance, I didn’t feel I could care very much.                            On the drive home it occurred to me that I should have been suspicious of Steve Moskowitz when I first met him. His guns, his anger, his odd behavior, they hadn’t sat well with me from the first, but I’d had other things on my mind at the time.

I let it roll around in my head most of the night. Of course the fact that he’d taken something from Benoit wasn’t conclusive. Still, there couldn’t be too many good conclusions to be drawn. Looking back, I realized that he’d advised me to forget about the whole Benoit matter, assuring me that nothing bad would happen, when there was no way he could guarantee that at all. Had he been trying to protect Benoit all along? Was he actually helping him in some way? Perhaps all of his taking me under his wing was just a way of keeping an eye on me and distracting me from the whole issue of the murders.

Then there was the odd coincidence of the similarity between the name of his favorite movie and the signature of the
Chapter and Verse Killers.
I had thought it a pretty weak link. Now I wasn’t so sure.

I asked myself why he’d changed his view of Benoit all of a sudden. The only answer I could come up with was that somehow he’d made some agreement with the man, something that was to his advantage.

I finally fell asleep with the help of some bourbon. Even then I slept lightly. I woke up out of a dream a few hours later and lay there trying to recapture it. Something had been eating at me and I couldn’t remember what it was. It wasn’t until a couple of hours of sleeplessness passed that it came to me.

I’d been dreaming about the postcards. Moskowitz had been following me in his car as I made my way to the farthest reaches of Maine. We were going to stop there and have a lobster. I remember that I was wondering why we weren’t in the same car, but I knew that Moskowitz had a case to try up there so having his car made sense. I remember him telling me that this town we were going to was only a few miles from the Canadian border. That seemed to stick in my mind.

Then I remembered what he’d said to me a while back when I’d first told him about the last postcard from Pesquot, Maine
. No. I’ve never been to Maine. That’s ten miles from the Canadian border.

How would he have known that if he’d never heard of the place?

I pushed it back and forth. Moskowitz could have just been taking a guess. He could have thought the odd Indian name meant it was near to Canada. He could have just as easily known where the town was and had let the fact slip.

Nothing conclusive in any of it, but it had nagged at the back of my mind for all these weeks. I found that I suddenly felt sleepy.

I woke up two hours later with the clear notion that I had to get out of Bardstown. I cursed myself for being naïve and taking things at face value; I never would have been this careless in New York. The instability of the situation had been staring me in the face all along and I’d simply ignored it.

At the very least, leaving would put some space between me and the situation, but it would also take me out of reach of both Benoit and Moskowitz. There seemed only one place to go.

Home.

Suddenly it seemed the only clear place to go. Why I hadn’t gone back sooner seemed an enormous, glaring question in the light of my sudden awareness. There were any number of people I could stay with in New York, including Dennis. None of them were known by either Benoit or Moskowitz. I supposed that, with enough digging, they could find me, but that could take weeks. By then, I planned to have spoken to as many lawyers and law enforcement agents who would listen to me. What that would accomplish, I wasn’t sure, but I certainly wasn’t going to let the situation escalate any further. Maybe I could get an order of protection against Benoit. If a complaint was lodged against him, maybe he and Moskowitz would leave me alone.

I got up and threw some clothes and toiletries into a bag. Then I stuffed the cash that had been untouched by my burglars into my jacket. After setting the alarm and making sure my answering machine was on, I got into my car and began the drive back to the City.

It should have felt like a homecoming, but it seemed that I didn’t really have a home anymore. As I hit I-95 going west, I felt only a sense of
flight
, not the sense of security I’d hoped I’d feel going back to the only home I’d ever known.

I felt a sudden twinge of guilt, knowing I’d left New York when it needed me most. As I drove down the West Side Highway I strained to see some evidence that it had changed in the time I’d been gone. I knew the only real changes would be downtown at the southern tip of the Island where I’d heard they were still excavating Ground Zero.

I decided that I’d park my car at a garage on 23
rd
Street on the West side, not far from my old
Co-op. I needed time to think and I knew just the place where I could spend some time deciding what to do. Wanting a bit of my old world back, I settled on The City View Diner, a staple in the neighborhood and an excellent example of a New York institution: the Greek diner.

I walked into the place and was hit by such a sense of nostalgia that it almost brought tears to my eyes. I’d hated this diner along with everything else a few months ago, but now it seemed like a haven of normalcy. It occurred to me how isolated I’d been up in Bardstown. Taking a table near the back, I sat and waited for who I knew would be coming. I wasn’t disappointed; after a few minutes a woman in her late thirties walked up to my table, order pad in hand. When she looked up from the menu she was carrying, her eyes flew open.

“Oh shit! I thought you were dead!!”

“Hi Debbie. Nice to see you too.”

“What happened to you? We all talked about it. One minute you were here for Sunday breakfast and the next…gone. What happened to you?”

“I moved upstate.”

“Oh, I know that much. Your girlfriend came in here a few times and when I asked about you, she almost took my head off. She said you were having a tantrum.”

“It was a little more complicated than that.”

“You’re not still with her are you?”

“No.”

“Good. I wanted to kick her ass, the way she acted. I hope I’m not offending you, but she’s a bitch.”

“I realized that a while back. And how are you?”

“What changes with me? The same. The City View is my life.”

“I’m glad you’re still here. I need to see someone I know.”

“Well, welcome back. Are you staying?”

I thought for a second. “I think so. Life in the suburbs doesn’t agree with me.”

“I understand. I grew up in Wyandanch. I don’t go back much.”

“The neighborhood looks the same.”

“They put up two new Co-ops while you were gone. It’s becoming yuppie heaven.”

“It doesn’t look so bad to me.”

“I guess it wouldn’t, compared to Upstate New York. So what do you want?”

As trite as it sounded, I was ecstatic to be able to say the words, “The usual.” The usual was two eggs over medium with home fries, sausages, and rye toast. I hadn’t had it since I left New York and it sounded like the best thing I could ever eat.

“I’ll get your coffee,” she said in her standard maternal voice and moved off towards the front of the diner.

I sat and basked in the glow of New York and loved it. I was halfway through my eggs when it hit me that I had to make some arrangements. It was a weekday so most of my friends would be at work. I pulled out my phone book and went down the list. Who did I feel close enough to that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to ask for a place to stay for a few days? Barbara was a good bet for a couch to sleep on, but I didn’t want to go down that road. I spent a good ten minutes going over the merits of my old friends. In the end, Dennis seemed to be the best choice; I was still embarrassed over my shitty treatment of him. In a way he was the last person I wanted to call. In the end, I knew it would be right to call him. I went to the pay phone near the bathroom.

“Oh shit!” he said when he heard my voice.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Just shocked! I thought I’d hear from you after I came up there but…I know. It goes both ways.”

`I wondered if calling him was a mistake. “Honestly, Dennis, I can’t argue with you. Looking back on everything, I was just being a self-centered prick. All I can say is I’m sorry.”

He breathed hard for a few seconds, letting his anger fade. “Well you owe me that at least. Where are you? I hear restaurant noise.”

“The City View.”

“
You’re back?
”

“It seems that way.”

“Did you miss Barbara?”

I burst out laughing causing someone at a nearby table to look at me funny. I gave her my best
Who told you you could look at me
stare. I was back in New York form. “I’m not sure there’s anyone in the free world who misses Barbara when she’s not around.”

“Good point. Okay, so you’re back. Where are you staying?”

“You’re going to hate me. That’s the point of my call. If you can put me up for a couple of days, I’ll tell you the rest of the story. A little bit happened after you saw me. I can guarantee you’ll find it interesting.”

“Well, I’m still mad at you, but I guess I’m not that mad. I can’t leave here till five, though.”

“I’m sure I can keep myself busy till then.”

“Okay. I’ll figure you’ll be there at 5:30. Okay?”

“Thanks, Alfalfa. You are a friend. I’m sorry I haven’t been one.”

“I’ll make you pay for it later.”

“Okay”. I hung up and went back to finish my eggs. There’s something about greasy food when you’re feeling emotionally battered. Debbie came by a few times to check on my coffee and to ask some more probing questions.