“I asked someone to help me,” I said, thinking that I was still lying, since I hadn’t asked Winston as much as coerced him. On the other hand, Winston hadn’t actually helped me as much as set me up. “I asked someone to help me scare off Vasquez.”
“Scare off?" Deanna might be in semishock, but she was still smart enough to see the inherent flaws in my plan, and she was calling me on it. That when you ask a man to scare off someone else, there was a volatility factor of plus ten. That what starts out as a fist in the face can end up as a knife in the heart. Or a bullet in the head.
“He was threatening this family, Deanna. He came to our house. ”
When something loves me I love it back, Deanna had said to me once. That was her rule to live by, her credo, her own semper fidelis. But she was in the battle of her life now, with bomb after bomb falling all around her, and it was anyone’s guess if that love could actually survive. Judging by the expression on her face, I would’ve had to say no. She was having problems recognizing me, I imagined — recognizing this man as the generally loving and gentle husband she’d known for eighteen years. Not this guy, who’d had a seedy affair and paid blackmail money because of it and even enlisted someone to get rid of this blackmailer for him. Was it possible?
“I didn’t know what else to do,” I said lamely.
“What happened?”
“I think Vasquez killed him.”
A sharp intake of breath. Even now, when I’d no doubt ripped apart every illusion she once cherished, I was still capable of surprising her. An affair—bad enough; but then murder.
“Oh, Charles . . .”
“I think . . . I believe, this man, the man who died, may have been taping me. Setting me up, sort of.”
“What do you mean, setting you up? ”
“He was an ex-con, Deanna. He was an ex-con and an informant, I think. He was obligated, maybe.”
“You’re telling me . . . ?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure. But I’m worried.”
And so was she. But maybe the biggest thing she was worried about was where love goes when it goes. This steadfast devotion of hers, which had been pummeled and knocked around and stomped on. Where?
“I knew something was wrong, Charles. I thought some money was missing before—when you took the first ten thousand, I guess. Maybe it’s my imagination, I thought. So I didn’t say anything. Maybe I was imagining everything — the way you were acting. The hours you were keeping. Everything. I thought it might be a woman. But I didn’t want to believe it. I was waiting for you to come tell me, Charles. . . .”
And now I had told her. But more than she could have actually imagined.
She asked me a few more questions—some of the ones I’d expected she would. Who was this woman, exactly? Was she married, too? Was it really just that one time? But I could tell her heart wasn’t really in it. And then other questions that maybe her heart was in, or what was left of her heart — how much trouble was I really in with the police, for instance, things of that nature.
But in the end, she told me to leave the house. She didn’t know for how long, but she wanted me out of there.
A few weeks later, weeks I spent avoiding Deanna and retiring to the guest bedroom after Anna went to bed, I found a furnished apartment in Forest Hills.
THIRTY
Forest Hills seemed to be made up of Orthodox Jews and unorthodox sectarians. People who seemed alone, or who were without a visible means of support, or who didn’t seem to really belong there. In that particular apartment or particular building or that actual neighborhood. I fit in perfectly.
For instance, I looked like a married man, but where was my wife? I was undoubtedly a father, but where exactly were my kids? And then I even became a little shaky on the means-of-support thing.
On the first Tuesday after I moved out, I took the train into work at Continental Boulevard.
I was called down to Barry Lenge’s office. That itself was unusual, since office hierarchy dictated that bean counters—even the head bean counter—travel to your office when a face-to-face was needed.
I went anyway. After all, I think I was suffering from a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome, and whatever self-confidence I had left was down to the approximate level of a whipped dog.
Barry Lenge looked even more uncomfortable than me. That should have been my first clue.
His triple chin made him appear physically agitated, in any case — as if his head couldn’t find a position where it wasn’t imposing on another part of his body. But today he looked worse.
“Ahem,” Barry cleared his throat, which should have been my second clue; there was something in there he was going to have a little trouble getting out.
“I was just looking over the production bills,” Barry said.
“Yes?”
“This Headquarters job. There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Now it must have been me who looked truly uncomfortable, because Barry looked away — at his set of silver pencils — and I remembered how Eliot had doodled on his stationery the morning I was fired off my account by Ellen Weischler.
“The thing is . . . something’s been brought to our attention.”
“What?”
“You see, there’s forty-five thousand here for music.” He was pointing to a piece of paper sitting on the desk in front of him. The same bid form I’d looked at before.
“Seethat?” Barry asked him. “Right there.”
I pretended to look, if only because that’s what whipped dogs do when given a command — they obey. I could see a number there all right; it looked like forty-five thousand.
“Yes?”
“Well, Charles . . . there’s a problem with that.”
“Yes?” Was that all I was going to say — answer each of Barry’s revelations with a yes?
“Mary Widger heard the same music on a different spot.”
“What?”
“I’m telling you this same piece of music was on another spot.”
“What do you mean?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong. Forty-five thousand dollars was for original music, right?”
“Right.”
“So it’s not original.”
“I don’t understand.” But I did understand, of course. Tom and David Music had found a piece of music in a stock house, and they hadn’t bothered to see if someone else had used it before. Someone had.
“Well, maybe it just sounds the same. It’s just a bed, really.”
“No. She brought it to the musicologist. It’s the same piece. Note for note.”
She brought it to the musicologist. Musicologists were generally consulted to make sure that any music we did wasn’t too close to any other existing piece of music we might be trying to imitate. For instance, we might cut a commercial to Gershwin’s “ ’S Wonderful,” but if the Gershwin estate wanted an arm and a leg to let us use it, we might attempt to rip it off, but not too closely — because the musicologist would say no. Only in this case, of course, it wasn’t Gerswhin who was being ripped off.
“I’ll talk to the music house,” I said, trying to sound as officially indignant as Barry did. Instead of scared.
“I talked to the music house,” Barry said.
I didn’t like the way Barry said that — music house — with a noticeable derision. A pointed sarcasm.
“Yes?”
“Yeah. I talked to the music house. So the question I have for you is this. How much?”