Half the way to the midtown precinct the white kid's cell phone rang.
After twenty seconds of conversation he looked at his partner and said, "They want us to bring him over to the Port Authority, Park."
"Why?"
"Didn't say."
"Who was it?"
"The sergeant."
WITH MY HANDS STILL bound behind me I was taken through a series of doors and down innumerable hallways to a Port Authority Police office somewhere in the bowels of the building.
"Hello, McGill," Bethann Bonilla said.
"Are you Lieutenant Bonilla, ma'am?" the white kid asked.
"Release him and leave us," she replied.
The young cops did as they were told. They asked no questions… this told me something.
The room was small and stale. The beat-up oak desk had stood there as long as the Port Authority itself and the floor had been battered by ten thousand feet. Many a purse snatcher and pick-pocket had been detained here before their deportation to the Tombs, or maybe straight to their arraignment. It was a sad stop-over for pimps, prostitutes, and the mentally deranged.
I felt right at home.
"To what do I owe my freedom?" I asked, taking a seat across from the cop.
"The bank sent down notice to drop charges," she said. "But I had already been notified. I decided to have them bring you here because NYPD won't be able to yank you out too quickly."
She smiled.
"Who are you worried about yanking me?"
"Kitteridge, Charbon," she said. "There's a DA named Tinely who seems to want his pound of flesh."
"And what do you want, Lieutenant?"
The wisp-thin, steel-hard lady cop placed her maroon elbows on the old-time desk. She laced her fingers, pressed the pads of her thumbs together, and considered me.
"That depends on what you have," she answered.
"You want to make a trade?"
"What do you need from me?"
"There's a pimp named Gustav on East Houston who's paying off a Lieutenant Saul Thinnes. One of the girls is a friend. I need Gustav busted-busted bad."
"And what do I get out of that?"
"Have you got a name for the dead man in Wanda Soa's apartment?"
Her eyes couldn't conceal the excitement.
I gave her Pressman's name and his alias. I told her that he was a hit man on staff with a killer known only as Patrick.
"Why would somebody want this Soa dead?" she asked.
"Maybe her drug connections. Can you drop a hammer on Gustav?"
"Oh yeah."
"You aren't worried about Thinnes?"
"If he's crooked he better be worried about me."
THERE WAS YET ANOTHER bartender at the Naked Ear when I got there at 7:06; a thirty-something white guy with slim shoulders and a little belly. I perched down at the far end of the bar and ordered my three cognacs. The bartender was named Ely. He knew everything about sports and so we had a long talk, between orders, about Henry Arm-strong, the only boxer who ever held three title belts in three different weight classes at the same time. In the space of twelve months, he successfully campaigned in nineteen defenses of those belts.
"I think he was superior to Sugar Ray Robinson," Ely said. "Pound for pound."
"Yeah," I said, "but it's not like math."
"What do you mean?"
"In weight lifting the man who lifts the heaviest weight wins. But in boxing, after a certain point, it's all heart."
"Hi," a woman said.
I turned and there was Lucy.
Ely slapped me on the forearm and moved on down the bar. "He called me," she said. "I asked all the bartenders to call me if you came in."
"What happened the other night?" I asked. "I was here."
"I wanted to see if you'd come twice."
"I'M OUT OF CONDOMS," Lucy apologized at one in the morning. "I only bought a box of three. I mean, I guess I could do something else."
I pulled the blankets off her and kissed her navel. She giggled and rolled away. She went too far and tumbled off the side of the bed. We both laughed and I pulled her back on.
We'd been in that bed for four hours. If I'd been taking an erectile-dysfunction drug I'd've had to go to the emergency room.
"I think it's all the tension in my life," I said. "That and the fact that both my wife and my girlfriend have boyfriends now."
"What's bad for the boy-goose is good for the girl-goose bartender," she said.
I kissed her.
There must have been some kind of hesitation in the kiss or my body language because she said, "Don't worry. I'm not asking for any more than I already got. I really am married. Jeff's a painter. He's at an art colony in New Hampshire. He's the kind of guy can't go three days without sex, so I know he's with someone."
"So I'm your revenge?"
"My solace," she said, and we held each other a while.
I GOT OUT OF the taxi, drunk on more than liquor. I was still high from the brief fight with the Regents security team and the passion that Lucy the bartender drew from me. I took a deep breath at the front door of my building. A man touched my left triceps. It hurt my wound. Turning toward him, I swiveled my torso at the hip when the blow came from behind.
There was only a moment of consciousness left to me, a sliver of fading light that I squandered wondering if I had been shot in the back of the head.
54
The smells of wood ash and pine needles were the first signs of returning consciousness. I was in a seated position. My fingers were numb from the tight bonds around my wrists, which were tied to the arm of the heavy chair. My feet weren't going anywhere, seeing that they were lashed to the front legs of the chair.
It took a moment for me to identify the speeding fire engine, its horns blaring. It was the headache brought on by the blow to my skull.
There were lights here and there in the room but the pulsating pain made them seem like stars-points in the darkness that illuminated nothing but themselves.
"He's awake," a gruff voice said.
There was motion in the room.
Two large shapes moved in my direction. Men in suits. One was large and brutal. The other looked like a professional manager of a large, glass-walled office.
"Mr. McGill," the manager said.
"Who is that?" I had to squint to see past the pain.
"My name is Shell," he said. "I hear that you've been looking for me."
Something about the connectivity between the ideas cleared up my vision. I was in a cabin, probably in the woods, judging by the smells. The larger man was quite hairy and wore a woolly gray suit. Silently I dubbed him Mammoth. Shell's suit was a muted silver-gray color and he wore expensive Italian shoes cut from red-brown leather.
"You coulda just called me," I said.
I had the urge to vomit but squelched it. Neither Mammoth or Shell looked like they'd have cleaned me up afterwards.
"There's a time for all things," Shell intoned. "This, my friend, is not the moment for bravery."
"Oh no? Why's that?"
The blow Shell delivered was hard-very hard. The heaviness of the chair anchored me, which only added to the power of the clout. I'm used to getting hit. I've sparred and fought real fights for nearly forty years. But Shell's blow was something real, a second fire engine crashing headlong into the first.
The next thing I knew there was cold water in my ears and running down my neck. That chill was the first time I was reminded of Patrick and Diego-but not the last.
"You can get seriously damaged if you don't answer my questions," Shell said.
I blinked twice. There was blood coming down the left side of my forehead. The upper part of the back of my left arm burned.