I stayed in the shower until the water cooled and then I stepped out and roughly toweled myself down.
Clean now, and ruddy from the heat, I walked over to my desk, dropped into the chair, opened a drawer, took out the envelope. They were inside still, the photographs of the naked woman found in a dead man’s pocket. I went through them one by one by one, the images so haunting even though they now were so familiar. The taut skin, the long legs, the beauty mark on the breast that seemed to glow in my imagination. Stare at something long enough and it becomes the model for perfection. Dr. Mayonnaise, despite all her evident qualities, was not the woman in the photographs. Dr. Mayonnaise had a face, she breathed and moved, she had the kind of daily concerns the woman in the photograph seemed to never know, and maybe that was the core of my disappointment in Karen, not the tofu or her sincerity or the cats, but her very concreteness. Right now, I was certain, I’d be disappointed in anyone other than her. The her of the photographs. Her.
Looking through the stack I had a strange idea. I rose and went to the area beside my bed and quickly pinned one of the photographs to the wall. A thigh, gently curving as it rose toward the rear. Then I pinned up another, a calf. Then a foot. Then a hip. Then a breast. One by one I pinned the photographs to the wall, in a rough order. There was no real shape to it, the photographs in no way matched up, each was as individual as a flower, but I did my best, reaching for a photograph, examining it carefully, twisting to pin it in its proper place, as absorbed in the task as a painter before a giant canvas. Picture by picture I created a sort of cubist montage of perfect body parts. And as I worked, something miraculous happened, the disparate parts came together in my mind, this ankle, that shoulder, that finger. As I put the parts of her body together, in my mind, I saw the body move and stretch and turn and bend.
When I was finished, when all the photographs were arranged on my wall, I sat on my bed and stared, and as I did, fear dropped like a black crow onto the base of my spine, sending out spurts of adrenaline that set me to shaking. There was something coming down on me, something handed to me by Joey Cheaps and kept alive for me by some strange unknown entity, something bigger than I ever could have suspected that first day in La Vigna when Joey Parma disclosed to me the darkest spot in his muddied past. It had cost Joey his life and sent Kimberly Blue my way and caused Earl Dante to threaten me in his smooth hissy lisp. It was huge and I was in the middle of it, for good or for ill, and I had to find my way into its heart before it swallowed me whole. And it seemed, somehow, that these pictures would lead me there.
These pictures, yes, and something else, a question, the question that Earl Dante had asked, trying and failing to hide the keenness of his interest. Who is behind the debt? he asked. Who is behind the questions? He wanted to know, and so did I. It was time to find out. It was time to meet Eddie Dean.
But before I did, I needed to know exactly what I was dealing with, I needed to peer into a dead man’s past.
Chapter 19
“I HAD BEEN warned you would darken my doorstep,” said Jeffrey Telushkin as we sat in his time warp of a living room.
“Detective McDeiss informed you of all my faults, no doubt,” I said.
“And more, I can assure you,” said Telushkin, his eyes bright, his hands coming together in a clap of glee. “He was positively savage. All of which, of course, only peaked my interest. So I made inquiries of my own, just to learn what I could.”
“Nothing too awful, I hope.”
Telushkin didn’t respond, he just chuckled and sat back in his chair. Telushkin was nothing like I expected for a former special agent of the FBI. He was short, round, with a bristly gray mustache, circular black glasses, and very shiny, very small black shoes. And he was cheerful, oh my yes, so very cheerful.
“You’ve come to talk about Tommy Greeley, from what I understand,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“Any particular reason?”
“His name has come up in a case I’m involved with, concerning something that happened many years ago.”
“Can you give me a clue, at least, as to what it’s about?”
“No, I’m sorry, there is a privilege I must abide, but anything you can tell me about Tommy Greeley will be much appreciated.”
“Tommy Greeley, the one that got away. Can I get you some tea? Maybe some Earl Grey?”
“That would be wonderful,” I said.
As Telushkin bounded to his kitchenette, I took a swift gaze about and then stood to get a closer look. I was recovering from the night before, but slowly. The bruise on my ribs had turned a fine shade of yellow violet, my wrist still ached whenever I pressed it back, so I pressed it back constantly to be sure it was still aching. But I was here on business, so I tried to ignore the pain as I examined Telushkin’s living room.
The walls were covered with familiar Picasso prints, a colorful outline of a rooster, the silhouettes of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, along with original and badly painted abstract and cubist paintings of naked women, paintings whose colors had dimmed over time. I peered at one of them more closely. Yes, of course, a tiny J.T. painted in the corner. There was a spinet piano wedged into one section of the modest one-bedroom but the rest of the furniture would have been considered stylish fifty years ago, rounded chrome legs and arms, square cushions, thin slabs of wood. Henry Miller, I assumed. And Henry Miller was on the bookshelves too, the other Henry Miller, along with Joyce and Bellow, Mailer, Anaïs Nin, Samuel Beckett, early Updike, early Wouk, a massive biography of Ben Gurion, oversized picture books on Surrealism, the Impressionists, Picasso, Picasso, more Picasso. I recognized the decor and the ambiance, yes I did. I could imagine old copies of the New Yorker stacked thigh-high in the bathroom.
There were bunches of photographs in silver frames scattered here and there on side tables, on the piano. A younger Telushkin and a prim little woman, undoubtedly Telushkin’s wife. A middle-aged Telushkin with the same wife and some children, presumably his own. Assorted wedding pictures as the children hitched one after the other under the chupa. An older Telushkin alone with his grand-children. A widower now, or had the wife simply had enough of the Henry Miller and just upped and left? Along with those family mementos were the expected trophy photographs of a man who had spent his career in public service one way or the other: Telushkin with Robert Kennedy, with Johnson, with Carter, with Clinton. Was I detecting a pattern?
“Ah, Mr. Carl, yes.” He brought in a wooden tray with a ceramic teapot, two cups on saucers, a sugar bowl with sugar cubes, a small milk pitcher. “How do you like your tea?”
“Just plain,” I said, sitting down again.
“I like mine with milk and sugar, in the British way. There now, how is that? Yes.” He stared at me over his teacup as he took a sip, as if he were sizing me up for some unknown purpose. “So. Mr. Carl,” he said, continuing his appraisal. I grew uncomfortable under his stare, looked around.
“Nice place,” I said.
“Thank you. I try to keep modern.”
“You said that Tommy Greeley was the one who got away.”
“Yes, I did. Of them all, he was the only one not to pay the piper, don’t you see? Which is unfortunate, since he was the main target all along.”
“Target of what, Mr. Telushkin?”
“Jeffrey. Call me Jeffrey. I’m retired now, no need to stand on ceremony any longer. The target of my inquiry. My great success. It was I who stumbled on it all.” He looked at me, waited for admiration to show on my face, was disappointed. “How much don’t you know?”