Sitting there, it seemed to me I could trace the beginning of the decidedly unpleasant taste to the latter portion of my night with Tulip, which is when, though I didn’t give it much thought until after my encounter with The Hat, I finally learned something concrete about the circumstances of her relationship with Mr. Kindt.
After our chat at Grand Central, Tulip and I had made our way back to the tattoo parlor on Orchard, where we poured ourselves shots from a bottle of Ketel One and toasted Cornelius, the knockout, the knockout’s formidable cleavage, the flexibility of the contortionists, my new tattoo, and, most of all, Mr. Kindt. On the subject of this latter, Tulip took pains to stress that she really had been stretching things into the realm of the speculative when she had offered me Mr. Kindt’s presumptive biography and, in high spirits, I lied and told her that Mr. Kindt’s origins didn’t matter to me in the least. He had been an extraordinarily generous friend, almost a patron, and if the 1 + 1 of some night on some lake didn’t feel like adding up to 2 then that was fine with me. Tulip said it was also fine with her — that if he had been a patron to me, he had been that and more to her in the time that she had known him. Which, I asked her, had been how long? She raised an eyebrow, started some kind of count on her fingers, stopped, shrugged, and said that it hadn’t been that long.
How long is that? I said.
Cornelius introduced me a month or so before I met you, she said. How long ago was that?
Cornelius introduced you to Mr. Kindt? I said.
She shrugged and took a sip of her drink. Then she toasted Anthony, the inept but very handsome first murderer. We drained our glasses, then Tulip put the bottle away, grabbed my hand, sunk a fingernail into it, and grabbed the back of my head.
It had been a very long time since anything like Tulip on that night in that back room had happened to me and by the time we were done and she had put on her T-shirt and gone to get herself another shot, I was lying in a heap extruding sweat, etc., and panting and feeling pretty magnificent. As I said previously, it was only the next day, as I was walking around the neighborhood in a daze, like someone had borrowed my brain and stuck an old cream-filled donut in its place, that any kind of even low-grade analytical thinking process kicked in. But after I left The Hat’s, and had poured a few midafternoon beverages on the paranoid feelings my visit and his peephole and commentary had produced, I went home and back to wallowing around in what, by the time I fell asleep in/was knocked out by the hot dog cart fumes, I had only half-convinced myself were probably just the symptoms of uncertainty inherent in any budding romance, let alone one taking root in the context of mock murders and so forth.
Anyway, my limping mind had gone on melting in and out of a sense of unease around the Tulip question. And sitting there at the Horseshoe that night, I kept coming back to the fact that she had only known Mr. Kindt for a little longer than I had, and that Cornelius had introduced her to him.
I hadn’t gotten much more to go on about this at my meeting with Cornelius and Co., though there had been plenty of information of a more general nature, especially in retrospect, to make my eyebrows tick up a notch or two.
This meeting had taken place the day before the murder at one of the outside tables at Veselka, and had started with Cornelius stressing to me that Mr. Kindt didn’t want to see me until after the job had been completed, that this was an important part of the scenario and should be adhered to.
Why? I said.
That’s the script, Cornelius said.
But I always see him.
Not before the murder.
The knockout and the contortionists were present at this get-together, which, like my conversation with the knockout at the Odessa, possessed a certain hard-boiled feeling that I will do my best to evoke, though not, in this case, I should stress, at the conscious expense of substantive or incidental accuracy: we are too deep into these sad, blurry proceedings for that. The knockout had on a black raincoat and a black miniskirt and kept crossing and uncrossing her legs, saying goddamn it, and sucking, almost slurping, on cigarettes, so that Cornelius finally told her to either take it easy or leave. For their part, the contortionists, dressed in matching purple velour tracksuits, had arrived late, then immediately settled into unpleasant leg and body positions and wouldn’t stop staring at me.
You’re all making me nervous, I finally said.
He’s nervous, one of the contortionists said.
I had a run-in yesterday, I said. With a guy called Mel the Hat. Old-timer. Anyone ever hear of him?
Mel the Hat? Is that a joke? the knockout said.
No, I’ve never heard of him. Now remember to hit him hard, said Cornelius, who had already run through the scenario once and was going over it a second time.
I heard you the first time, I said.
Once you’ve got the tape around him you smack him on the side of the head with the big ashtray and then you pull the wire tight around his throat.
Are you ladies going to be there? I asked the contortionists.
Us ladies, they said. Flicking their eyebrows up.
Just you, said Cornelius. You won’t need any help with him.
This proved true. When I pulled him out of bed the night of the murder, he smiled, and said, my dear boy, and let me push him into the front room.
What about for moral support?
At this, the knockout picked up her cigarette and jammed it into her mouth, then two-fingered a shard of lettuce and flicked some of the dill dressing coating it onto the ground.
If you don’t mind my pointing it out, you guys seem a little agitated, I said to Cornelius after we had all watched the knockout slip the lettuce shard past the cigarette into her mouth.
Unrelated, Cornelius said.
Nothing to fucking do with you, said the knockout.
That’s right, Mr. Nervous, said the contortionists.
Fine, I said.
I asked if I could have a copy of the scenario.
Cornelius said I could not.
That’s why I’ve been going over it with you, Henry, he said. Oral instructions only, no record — safe. Just like every other time we’ve done this.
I had written instructions the first couple of times.
Yeah, big deal, what did they say?
Why isn’t Tulip here?
Why would she be here? said the knockout. Why does he think Tulip should be here, Cornelius?
Cornelius said he didn’t know why I thought Tulip should be there.
I said maybe because she (1) apparently had known him for quite some time and was probably either working for or with him and (2) was a key player in the scenario.
He can count, said the knockout.
I’ve known her for a while, said Cornelius. She’s a friend. Then he said Tulip wasn’t there because she already knew what she was supposed to do. Her presence had not been required because her role in the affair was merely ancillary and did not involve the scene of the crime.
She practically lives with him, I said.
Not according to the scenario. According to the scenario she lives on Orchard Street, behind the tattoo parlor.
Yeah, I know about that place, I said. I know about the back room. We’re getting pretty friendly, me and Tulip.
No one said anything.
Very friendly, I said.
Jesus Christ, make this guy stop with the commentary, said the knockout.
That’s your business, Henry, Cornelius said. We don’t care about that. Just stick to the scenario.
She gave me a tattoo, I said.
Tell him to shut up, Cornelius, the knockout said.
I just thought you guys would be interested, that’s all. Aren’t you guys interested? I said to the contortionists.
They didn’t answer.
Yeah, yeah, we’re all real interested, the knockout said. Henry finally got a piece of ass.