“It was so nice to meet you, Beth,” said Carol.
“Likewise, I’m sure,” said Beth.
“Bye, Victor. Be good. I’ll call you when I get home, tell you what they said.”
“So that’s Carol,” said Beth as we watched the two of them elbow their way away from the bar.
“That’s Carol.”
“Carol, Carol, Carol.”
“She does yoga.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” said Beth. “It seemed like you guys were pretty hot and heavy.”
“So it did,” I said.
“Are you?”
“I didn’t think so, but I’ve never known what the hell is going on in any of my relationships. Why should this one be any different? I suppose by the time I get up to speed, she’ll dump me.”
“I don’t think Slick Nick would mind that at all,” said Beth.
“No, he seemed a bit smitten, didn’t he?”
“You’re not worried, your new girlfriend spending the night alongside handsome Mr. Nick?”
“With that tie? Please.”
Just then Antoine stepped up and reached over the bar to tap me on my shoulder.
“There he is,” he said, indicating a short, hunched man with wavy black hair and a pointed face. He looked like an overdressed ferret with bad posture as he made his way, meeting and greeting, across the club. A walking T-bone in a black turtleneck moved in front of him, wedging the crowd open as if for Caesar. “He generally holds court in the cigar lounge,” said Antoine. “And he likes his privacy.”
“Thanks for the warning,” I said.
We stayed at the bar for a few moments longer, finished our drinks, paid our bill, watched as Geoffrey Sunshine entered the glass-walled, smoke-filled room. Geoffrey Sunshine, the restaurant mogul who had brought François Dubé, Leesa Cullen, and Velma Takahashi together, a combustible combination that ended in murder. I had a few questions for Mr. Sunshine.
“You ever smoke a cigar, Beth?”
“Not in this life.”
“Time to start,” I said as we fought our way to the cigar lounge and to Geoffrey Sunshine. “Off we go, into the miasma.”
33
“You’re the lawyers representing François,” said Geoffrey Sunshine. He had heavy-lidded eyes and thin lips, and every word that slipped out of his mouth had an aura of corruption about it.
“That’s right,” I said.
“And you want to talk to me?”
“If your nanny doesn’t mind,” I said, directing my thumb at the T-bone in the black turtleneck.
The moment we had stepped up to the corner of the lounge where Sunshine was sitting, the bodyguard had interjected his massive frame between his boss and us, as if Sunshine was the president and our law firm’s name was Hinckley & Hinckley. We were talking now over the man’s broad shoulders as he restrained us with his outstretched arms, readying to bum-rush us out the door.
Sunshine took a couple of puffs from his absurdly long cigar as he eyed us and then said, “It’s okay, Sean.”
The bodyguard bared his upper teeth like a disappointed dog before letting us by.
“How does it look for François?” said Sunshine, eyeing his cigar and speaking as if he cared not a whit one way or the other. “Are you going to get him out of jail?”
“We got him a new trial,” said Beth. “Things are looking better than before.”
“Tell him there is always a place for him in my kitchen if you are successful.” He showed his little teeth in an approximation of a smile. Something about his ferret face looked strangely familiar. “I could really use him, especially with the way my current chef abuses the turmeric.”
“I’m sure François will be very grateful to hear it,” said Beth.
“Sit down, both of you,” said Sunshine, gesturing toward a couch set kitty-corner to his chair. There were two men in suits on the couch, overfed men with cigars, there to talk business with the mogul, but Sunshine gave them a brief nod and they jumped up with alacrity to give us the seats. It shouldn’t have, but it felt damn good to see them scamper.
“Now,” said Sunshine after we sat, “how can I help my good friend François?”
I took out the picture of Velma, passed it over. “Do you recognize this woman?”
He looked at it, squinted his beady eyes, looked at it again. I didn’t remember ever meeting him before, but something about his sneer of a personality struck a chord of memory.
“It might be Velma,” he said, “but she looks different somehow.”
“I think she had some surgery.”
“Well then, definitely Velma.” He sucked at his cigar. “Velma Wykowski, one of the famous Wykowski sisters.”
“I didn’t know she had a sister.”
“Leesa Cullen, I’m talking about,” he said. “That’s what we called them when they were both single, the famous Wykowski sisters. They didn’t look anything alike, and that was the joke. They used to hang out at the bar when I was just starting. They were often the evening’s entertainment.”
“Karaoke?”
“More like carry out the door. They drank too much, flirted too much.” His eyebrows rose obscenely. “They did everything too much. This was before they met up with François. He broke up the sister act. Marriage seems to take the fun out of people, don’t you think? Still, it was a tragedy what happened to Leesa.”
“Yes it was.”
“Whatever happened to Velma?”
“She got married,” I said. “You know, Mr. Sunshine, you look familiar.”
“Call me Geoffrey.”
“Sure, Geoffrey. Do I know you somehow?”
He sniffed loudly, rubbed his pointy nose. “I don’t think so.”
“Where’d you go to college?”
“Temple,” he said.
“Where’d you go to high school?”
“Abington.”
“What year?”
He stuck his cigar in his mouth, rolled it around with his tongue. “So you’re that Victor Carl.”
I snapped my finger. “Jerry Sonenshein. Son of a bitch, I knew I knew you.”
We each gave a couple loud “Hey”s and slapped each other on the shoulder and pretended we had been the best of friends in high school and could be the best of friends still.
“You’ve done all right by yourself, Jerry,” I said as we calmed down.
“And you became a lawyer,” he said, chuckling, as if by passing the bar I had fallen through an open manhole.
“Why’d you change your name?”
“In this business it helps to have a bright moniker. What could be brighter than Sunshine?”
“You were an AV guy, I remember, pushing projectors around the halls like you owned the place.”
“And you wrote those stupid editorials for the newspaper. What was it?”
“The Abingtonian,” I said. “And they were supposed to be funny.”
“They were stupid, Victor. Not funny. Stupid. All the AV guys were laughing at you.”
“And you were all so full of yourselves, as if you were on some higher plane because you could run the film projector.”
“We ruled the school.”
“Except when the greasers were flushing your heads down the toilet.”
“I don’t recall you being on the football team yourself.”
“You know what I also remember, Jerry?”
“The name’s Geoffrey, Vic.”
“I remember that I never liked you.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, two high-schoolers again, murder in our eyes, facing off in dodgeball. And then we gave each other a couple more loud “Hey”s and a couple “Ho”s and slapped each other again on the shoulder, maybe a little harder this time, and pretended that our high-school animosity had disappeared over the years.
“Cigar?” said Sunshine.
“Sure,” I said.
“Sean,” said Sunshine, “bring us a selection.”
It wasn’t long before we were sitting back in our seats, the three of us, puffing away, a noxious cloud of smoke obscuring our features as Sunshine talked about François Dubé and the famous Wykowski sisters. Beth had opted for an Arturo Fuente panatela, thin and spicy with the delicate scent of nuts and sweet woods. I went with a Joya Antano Gran Consul from Davidoff, the King Farouk of cigars, I was told, short, fat, and potent. Beth seemed to be enjoying herself. I tried to keep a smile on my face, but King Farouk was doing calisthenics in my stomach.