“Am I in some kind of trouble, baby?”
“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”
“Why didn’t you come home?” I asked simply. “I mean, if you just wanted to be with a lover, you could have met him in the daytime or pretended to be at some event at night.”
“My mother—”
“No, honey. Your mother’s not sick and we both know it. You were afraid of something, &aid of me.”
“The way you, the way you made love to me,” she said.
“No. That’s not it. You were upset about... me. You asked me to go to therapy, you joked about divorce... Are you afraid of me? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head the way she always did when she was hiding something.
I knew then that I wouldn’t get any more out of her. She wouldn’t break down. The only thing I could hope for was that she was looking for ammunition in the divorce.
She was looking down while I peered over her head at Queens.
Then the phone rang and I got up to answer.
“Hello,” I said, remembering Sergei.
“Hey, bro, what you know?”
“Hey, Cass. What’s happenin’, man?”
“You, my brother, you.”
“What’s up?”
“We got to have some words, man,” the security expert said. “When?”
“Meet me at the Steak House at five. We don’t need a reservation there.”
I hung up and turned to Mona.
“I gotta go, honey,” I said. “I’ll call you later.”
“We aren’t finished talking.”
“For now we are,” I said. “Call your boyfriend. Talk to him.”
She took a deep breath with which she intended to deny my accusation. But looking into my face she saw that it was useless. Her body went slack on the couch. I got my bag and went toward the door.
“Ben,” she called at my back.
“Yeah?”
“Dr. Shriver called. He said that he has an opening tomorrow morning at seven seen.”
I went out the door, closing it softly as I left.
The Steak House at Park and Forty-sixth was owned by one of Cassius Copeland’s old friends from the intelligence branch of the military police. As long as Cassius ate at the bar, he didn’t have to pay for food or wine. And so I was waiting there after checking into the Reynard for a two-week stay.
I had a lot of money in the bank, well over a hundred thousand dollars. I never spent anything, and when Mona took vacations, she liked to stay home because she traveled so much for her job. I could pay for the Reynard and first-class airfare to any destination in the world.
Sitting at the bar I thought that Hong Kong would be a good place to lose myself, or maybe Ghana. I could pack up and be gone before Mona knew what had happened. Cass would help me. He’d been a captain in military intelligence. He’d told me many stories about ways that men could disappear.
“Hey, bro,” he said from behind me.
“Cass, we got to stop meeting like this, man.”
“You the only Negro I ever met gets to the appointment before me,” he said.
I looked at the clock above the bar; it read 4:46.
“Yeah. I got a lotta time on my hands,” I said.
Cassius’s expression turned sour. He took a seat on the stool next to me.
“Yeah. Uh-huh. That’s why we got to talk.”
“Mr. Copeland,” a very big white man bellowed from the other end of the bar.
“Joey,” Cassius replied.
Joey Bondhauser, owner of the Steak House and half a dozen other popular restaurants, was taller than most men and fatter than anyone I had ever known personally. His blue suit was perfectly tailored, however, and his hands and voice gave the impression of great strength.
Joseph Bondhauser had been a senior communications officer for Army Intelligence in western Europe. Though Cass never told me anything particular about his one-time boss, he implied that all Joey had to do was frown and a man could die anywhere in the world.
“This is my friend Ben Dibbuk, Joey.”
“Pleased to meet you,” the big man said.
I’d seen Bondhauser before but we had never been introduced.
His handshake was powerful. I had the feeling he could have snapped my bones if he wanted to.
“Ben and I got a little business so I brought him here.”
“Why don’t you take a table in back?” the restaurateur asked.
“Using my Joey-get-a-steak-free card,” Cass said with a smile.
“AW, don’t be like that, Cassius,” Joey said. “You were one’a my best men. Somebody I could trust. Magda. Magda, come over here.”
A very attractive brunette wearing the sheerest of blue gowns came over to us. She was twenty-five, no older and, upon closer examination, quite beautiful.
“Yes, Mr. Bondhauser?”
“You know my friend Cass.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Give him my private dining room. Everything on the house.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
I could see the awe and appreciation in Magda’s eyes. She beheld in Joey’s huge form power and potential in whose wake she was happily drawn.
“Cass, you ready to take a real job somewhere?” Joey asked then.
“I gotta job, man.”
“That make-believe, antiterrorist bullshit?”
“Everything’s make-believe, Colonel,” Cassius Copeland said. “Nothin’s for real.”
Deep pleasure infused the fat man’s face. He nodded and beamed at my friend.
“You are a dangerous man, Cassius Copeland. You see the truth before anyone else. Magda.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Give him everything he wants.”
“As you say.”
“See you later, Cass,” Joey said, shaking the security officer’s hand. “Nice meeting you, Ben.”
Watching him walk away from us, I was thinking about the words As you say. They seemed to imbue the restaurant owner with great power. It struck me as odd that the one obeying was also the person who articulated the degree of Joey’s influence. This seemed very important to me at the time.
Magda led us through the dining room and up a slender flight of dark-wood stairs. On the second floor there was a long, narrow hallway that had doors on either side in staggered fashion, so that first there would be a door on the right and then a few paces later there’d be one on the left. At the end of the hall was a double door hewn from solid oak.
Magda took out a key and unlocked the left-hand side. She pushed this open and ushered us in.
The light came on automatically as we entered. There was a large round table attended by four wooden chairs with red velvet seat cushions.
“I’ll send up Felix with your menus,” Magda said when we were seated.
“I want you to take our orders,” Cass said, “but don’t bring up anything for fifteen minutes.”
Magda smiled and nodded. If the hostess resented the request, she did not show it. She left without another word.
After she was gone, Cass sat back in his chair and stared at me. He did this long enough for me to start to feel uncomfortable.
“What?” I asked at last.
“We got to talk,” he said. “But first I’ll tell you something about me, something that no one in my everyday life, my real life, knows.”
This sudden honesty made me anxious. One of the things about our relationship was that we never talked about our lives at all. Everything was light, impersonal, noncontroversial. I had known for some time that I was probably Cass’s only confidant at Our Bank, but even there he was never very forthcoming.
“I’m a man, right?” Cass asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t be worried, Ben. Ain’t nuthin’ wrong here. I’m just tellin’ you that when people look at me, they see somethin’. I’m big and strong, tough-minded, and the kinda guy who likes sports. Right?”