Pierce Milbank’s Claremont Avenue duplex (which had once belonged to the great blind historian, Duncan Gateshead, when he was a visiting lecturer at Columbia) had three fireplaces, two kitchens and a Jacuzzi. In the front hallway, softly lit by a chandelier, he had hung a framed photograph of himself taken several Easters ago at his late grandmother’s home in Connecticut. In a vested tweed suit, the jacket draped over his shoulders à la Sinatra, he stood in front of a cluster of white birches, the last snows of spring withdrawing to sullen patches on the lawn. The only thing missing was a brace of freshly bagged grouse splayed at his feet.
Sure, it was all there, buried somewhere in the faint, granular background of the black and white print. The legendary Boston period, running black opium out of a quiche shop on Mass. Ave., then up to the majors, the fast track: drug casseroles, high-stakes badminton, the tumbling act in his sports car, charcoaling a steak in a men’s room sink at the New York Stock Exchange. Levels upon levels of carefully plotted can-you-top-this outrageousness.
Christo lifted the picture off its hook and carried it into the living room where the light was better.
“Like it?” Pierce entered clutching a black gym bag. “My publicity still. Can’t you just see it on the cover of the Times Book Review?” He pulled the bag’s zipper back and showed Christo what was inside.
“Don’t you believe in banks?”
“This is just mad money.” Pierce counted out thirty one-hundred-dollar bills. “You’re the last one in on this shipment. I ought to fine you a couple hundred for lateness, but I won’t. Seeing as how you’ve been out of action up till now.”
“Thanks, white man.”
“Where’s the car? Still down at Chemikazi’s?”
“Yeah. Ought to be safe there, don’t you think?”
“No good. Tomorrow you’ll drive it up to Fox Street in the Bronx and leave it there. It’ll be stripped or torched within twenty-four hours.”
“Whatever you say.”
“That’s the spirit.” Pierce zipped the bag shut and tugged slyly at his blond mustache. It was easy to visualize him behind a carved desk at his family’s shipping company, barking memos into a dictaphone. “So where’s your friend from Florida? You could’ve brought her along, that’s no breach of security.”
“She seemed to be having a good time so I left her down with Looie.”
“He’s such a gentleman.” A click of the tongue. “You’re not pressed for time, so why not stick around? I thought I might shake up a few gimlets. Gin or vodka?”
They carried their drinks upstairs to the “conference room,” a cork-lined sanctum filled with books and dominated by a long mahogany table surrounded with leather swivel chairs. Heavy glass ashtrays were distributed around the table and a water pitcher and tumblers sat on a tray in the middle. Black velvet curtains eclipsed the windows.
“What is this? You’ve got stockholders now?”
“You haven’t been up here since I renovated, have you? My hermitage. I shut off the phone, come up here to read and think.”
“You’re in clover, Pierce. What’s to think about?”
“Everything. The past. The future. The book I want to write.”
“Uh-huh.” Christo had heard this bedtime story before. “A little soon for your memoirs, yes?”
“No, no. Something with a broader scope. An extended essay on the ingredients that threaten the most basic structure of our lives: psychiatry, deified technics, the credit economy. I’m calling it Under the Wheels of History.”
“Sounds like a thriller.”
“Be as snide as you like.” Pierce’s top lip bounced on the rim of the sweating gimlet glass; he took tiny sips as though it was medicine. “But in this business you’ve got to have an escape route. You must leave yourself some open space, in the same way that it’s essential to maintain that distance between yourself and the street.”
Christo propped his feet on the table, rolled down his lids. “A little crackerbarrel philosophy?”
“All I’m saying is, stay with the game too long and they grind you up for hamburger. What breaks most guys is their own greed. They go for that one last score and get buried.”
“But that won’t be you, huh? While those other clowns are sinking out of sight, you’ll be dickering movie rights.”
“It may not be easy but it can be done. Boston’s biggest smack dealer from the sixties is now running a three-thousand-acre Christmas tree ranch in Wyoming. And Denny Sunshine — you might remember him as the man who once dropped ten thousand hits of mescaline into the Fenway Park bleachers from a helicopter — well, Denny retired years ago to a vanilla plantation in Guadeloupe where he weaves rugs and makes babies. So I’m not worried. I’ll get clear in time. There’s more discipline and prudence in my genes than either of them could even think about.”
Though the timing wasn’t right, Christo laughed. “Those genes, where would we be without them. And how is Sara? Have you heard from her lately?”
“Holding up pretty well.” Pierce looked down, buffing one section of mahogany with the sleeve of his shirt. “She lives on a feminist commune outside Austin. They grow grapefruit there, and not bad. She sends me a crate every couple of months. They look after her down there and she’s coming right along. Goes spelunking on the weekends she says — you know, crawling around in caves with a carbide lamp on her head? She was a total claustrophobe when we were kids. Five minutes in a closed car would make her sick and in the dead of winter she slept with all her windows open.”
“Really. I didn’t know that.”
“I haven’t forgotten, jazzbo, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
Christo smiled sweetly. “Neither have I.”
It was seven or eight years ago. A judge with a crowded calendar had remanded Christo to a state institution for purposes of “observation.”
It was while waiting in the hallway for his preliminary hearing on a charge of attempting to redeem stolen traveler’s checks that Christo realized he could go somewhere other than prison. In this particular round of The State v. No Fixed Address they had him backed into a corner, but there was no reason why he couldn’t take the punches on his arms and shoulders. In the time it took to walk to the water fountain and back, he worked out his maneuvers.
When the Hon. J. Roccia banged the gavel to start things off, Christo grasped his head and dropped to the floor. Before the bailiff could reach him, though, he was back on his feet and circling left behind a straight jab, explaining to the court that the colony of soldier ants inside his skull was often upset by loud noises. Judge Roccia reminded him that it was within his power to order physical restraints. Christo replied that if proof was needed, he would try to coax one of his little guests out the front entrance (defendant here indicated his nose) for cross-examination. He could try for one of the colonels, Christo said, but he was a lot closer to the enlisted men. The Hon. suggested that Christo’s attorney make some effort to control his client; at which point Christo, throwing looping hooks as he bulled his way toward the bench, confided that this court-appointed scumbag had made sexual advances to him. The public defender, a young busy-bee only a few months past his bar exam, experienced a jolt of paranoia that caused him to believe a single drunken episode with his wife’s older brother was now about to bring an oh-so-promising career down in flames. As he rose to stammer his indignation, Christo backpedaled and began to lead an entire ant battalion in a double-time march across the defense table.
And that was all. Citing the fact that defendant had no previous convictions (That you know of, Christo murmured to himself), the Hon. Roccia stated his intention, pending agreement of counsel, of rendering Mr. Christo into the custody of qualified professionals who could determine his mental competency. Whenever that might be.