TWENTY-THREE

VULNERABLE TO ATTACK from the blind spot astern, fighter pilots used to slew their airplanes from side to side in order to see the approaching enemy before he snuck into attack position. Fighter pilots used to call this maneuver “clearing their tail.” That’s what we were doing, clearing our tail. Crystal drove in intense, two-hands-on-the-wheel silence. Hunched into the passenger seat, Calabash reached a huge hand out the window and adjusted the sideview mirror. Jellyroll and I in the back watched the following traffic. When I’m engrossed in a thing, he insists on knowing what it is. He stood on his hind legs, his front legs braced on the seat back. His breath fogged the window.

We drove crosstown on Fourteenth Street. There was too much traffic to determine whether any of it was following us or just going our way. So Crystal threw the car into a hard left across the westbound traffic onto Irving Place. We headed north toward the elegant wrought-iron gate to Gramercy Park several blocks ahead.

A little white Japanese car, a Subaru or something, made the same left onto Irving Place. No other vehicle did so. Irving Place ends at the park—I could see the statue of Edwin Booth as Hamlet—and traffic must turn right onto Twentieth Street, one-way eastbound. We could clear our tail by circling the park. I suggested that.

The white Subaru went right around with us. There were two men in the car, but I couldn’t tell much more than that because by then the windows were pretty badly fogged. Dog breath is strong stuff. I told Jellyroll to sit, and that made him even more interested. He cocked his head at me. I told him he was a good dog.

“See the white car?” I asked.

“Hmm,” said Calabash to the sideview mirror.

Crystal was looking in the rearview mirror as well. We turned onto Gramercy Park West. So did the little white car. Then it began to flash its lights at us at it moved up close behind us. Attack mode?

“Artie,” said Calabash in his deadly calm voice.

“Yes, Calabash?”

“Move over behind me, ’cause I gonna shoot tru dat left-hand window.”

I hunched my shoulders, pulled Jellyroll into my lap, and did as I was told. At the time, shooting through the window made perfect sense to me. It had come to that by then, the exchange of gunfire on a venerable residential street. I still could smell Chet’s death on my hands. There was no reasoning with these assholes. You couldn’t sit down with them, have a cup of coffee and work things out. You simply had to shoot them through their thick brows and worry later about the repercussions. Contrary to popular belief, you still can’t hold a running gun battle on the streets of NYC and not suffer some legal repercussions.

“Wait!” shouted Crystal. “It’s my Uncle Ray—”

Yes, I could see him now, in the passenger seat of the Subaru, and that was Ronnie Jax driving. The entire right side of the Subaru was mashed. What happened to his Lincoln? Mafia cutbacks? Uncle Ray was motioning for us to pull over.

Crystal did so, stopping beside a fire hydrant. With my toe, I shoved the tape farther under Calabash’s seat. Uncle Ray got his elbows out of the little car and used them to pry himself the rest of the way out. He waddled over to Crystal’s car and hauled himself in with me. It felt like an air bag had just gone off back there. From my lap, Jellyroll sniffed him up and down. Uncle Ray was sweating profusely. It smelled faintly of marinara sauce. He wore no fancy three-piece suit now. A black-and-green running suit had taken its place. He must have ordered it from a tent store.

“They whacked Danny Barcelona,” he panted. His eyes were wide. “I gotta back off. I’m sorry.”

“What about Uncle Billy?” Crystal wanted to know.

“I ain’t found him yet, but now I gotta quit looking. Fuckin’ Danny—I used to know him—he let somebody make a movie of him doing business. They can’t have that. A smoking gun. How can they have that? So they had him whacked.”

“Who did?” I asked.

“The honchos. The heavies. The hot shits. And if they whacked Danny, they’d whack me if they even had a dream one night I knew something. So I can’t know nothing. I’m sorry. Crystal, you need to get clear away from this. It wouldn’t be a bad thing you were to get out of the country for a while. Take Billy.”

“But Uncle Ray, I don’t know where he is!”

“Listen, Crystal, I ain’t trying to be a tough guy, but at this point, you got to think Billy’s gone for good. Might never turn up. And you got to think about yourself.” Jellyroll licked Ray’s ear.

Double-parked, Ronnie was blocking traffic. Very dangerous. Obstructions make New York drivers crazy, even though there are obstructions everywhere. They began to honk long, hostile blasts. Ronnie Jax leaned out the driver’s side. “Shuddup! I’m parkin’ here!” He shook his fist at them. That annoyed me. They took the precaution of changing clothes and cars only to attract attention by starting a street altercation, the dumb fucks.

It seemed to annoy Uncle Ray, too. “Ronnie, you stupid gink, get outta the way!”

“But, boss—”

“Go around the block! Or you’ll be back pickin’ shit with the homing pigeons!”

Ronnie drove off.

“Crystal, if there’s hard evidence out there that’ll land them in the joint, they ain’t gonna ask a lot of intelligent questions before they start whacking. You got to take me serious on this.”

“I do, Uncle Ray.”

“…It’d be best if we didn’t talk for a while.”

“Okay,” said Crystal without turning around.

“Do you forgive me on this?”

“Sure, Ray.”

“You need money?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Here, take two grand.” He handed the bills to Calabash. “Good luck, sweetie—” Uncle Ray couldn’t extricate himself from the car. I gave him a shove from behind. Out, he turned around and thanked me.

No one followed us back uptown. At least, we didn’t see anybody follow us uptown.

 

Crystal, Calabash, and Jellyroll lined up on the bed as I inserted the tape into the mouth of the machine. I couldn’t remember my bedroom ever being so full of thick tension before. Malaise, yes, sexual longing and loneliness, certainly, but never a tension like this. We had in our hands—more precisely, in my VCR—that which all the crazies wanted, the thing for which Chet had died young. I took a seat in the gallery, aimed the remote, and pressed the button…

A snowy street in a small town. Homes bedecked with Christmas ornaments. A sign on a post: “You Are Now in Bedford Falls.”

What?

The people in the homes, solid, simple, American homes, are praying:

“God, help George Bailey.”

“He never thinks of himself, God, that’s why George is in trouble tonight.”

Then cut to the night sky, the firmament—Heaven—where God and Joseph are talking:

“Hello, Joseph, trouble?”

“Looks like we’ll have to send someone down. A lot of people are asking for help for a man named George Bailey.”

“Send for Clarence. He hasn’t earned his wings yet.”

“Hey,” said Calabash, “I saw dis movie! It’s A Wonderful Life.”

Crystal and I sat staring at these old, familiar images with our jaws hanging slack. Jellyroll wagged his tail at all the togetherness on the bed. George Bailey rescued his brother Harry, future war hero, from the icy pond…For a dim instant, I thought Chet must have hidden the wrong tape in his freezer.

Then the light dawned. Suddenly I understood. Even before I could sort through the twisted logic of the thing, I understood. I was certain—

There never was any tape! It never existed.

“What is this,” said Crystal, “some kind of sick joke?”

“No,” I said.

“No?”

“Chet made it up.”

“What do you mean, Chet made it up?

On the beach at Fire Island, Chet had told me that his story came to a dead end “but then he heard about the tape.” He didn’t hear about the tape. He invented it. He invented it to shake up the principals in the story, to dislodge them from deep cover, to blow them out into the open. And it worked. He’d started a war—trouble was, he had ended up one of its casualties. Even while I thought him utterly nuts, I admired him for his dedication.

“What are you talking about!” Crystal demanded.

I had drifted off, left her hanging.

“Chet was dying, and he knew it. He could barely talk, but he started coaching me on the contents of the tape. He told me how the assholes—Trammell, Tiny, Norm, Danny Barcelona, and the Fifth Man—were dressed, the time of day, even the color of the umbrella. Why did he waste his last breaths on that, if I could see for myself by watching the tape? Because I couldn’t watch the tape—because there never was a tape.” God and the angels watched while young George Bailey saved Mr. Gower, the distraught druggist, from ruin by not delivering those poison capsules.

“Look at it like this. Everything got started because the assholes thought there was a tape that’d incriminate them, a smoking gun, as Uncle Ray put it. Trammell decided to drown. Tiny Archibald kidnapped you as a way to get to Trammell, because he thought Trammell made the tape. Norm Armbrister showed up to help rescue you because he thought Tiny made the tape.” The dance floor parted over the swimming pool. George and Mary went in first.

Crystal was staring off, thinking. “But wait a minute. He couldn’t make up the meeting. There had to actually have been a meeting, right?”

“Yeah. Somehow Chet got wind of it. He said that the meeting took place during a garden party around Tiny’s pool. Presumably, a lot of people attended. Chet must have learned about it from one of them. He said something about a guy whose body had to be identified by dental records—”

“Great.”

Mary and George sang, “Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight, come out tonight—”

“It doesn’t make sense any other way…Something else Chet said before he died—he said, ‘If you use it right, this tape can save your lives.’ ”

“Right, it worked great for him.”

“But his purposes were different from ours. He wanted to stir things up. We want to do the opposite. I think he meant that if they thought we had the tape, if they thought that harming us would cause the tape to go public, then they’d leave us alone.”

“Yeah, when they hear we got our own copy of It’s a Wonderful Life, they’ll be paralyzed with fear.”

“I love dot angel Clarence,” said Calabash.

The phone rang. “Every time a bell rings, it means an angel gets his—”

“Hello?”

“Jesus, Artie, I just heard—” It was Shelly, Jellyroll’s agent. “He actually threw up? Right there on the set, he barfed it right up—?”

“Shelly, can I get back to you—?”

“I just got a call from the Mr. Big Butthole at R-r-ruff. He said Fleckton’ll never work in this town again. He’s a goner. Mr. Big said New and Improved R-r-uff’s a goner, too. You know how he put it? He said, ‘We’re gonna have to eat this one.’ I picture the dumb fucks sitting around this big boardroom table munching tons of kibble. Tell me, Artie, was it hilarious? When he hooped?”

“It was pretty hilarious.” Poor Mr. Fleckton.

“They want to renegotiate. We’re within our rights to stick them with the rest of the contract. As Jellyroll’s agent, I suggest that we’ve got them by the short ones, and we ought to run with it.”

“Whatever you think, Shelly.”

“You okay? You don’t sound too good. Jellyroll’s okay, right?”

“Everything’s fine. I’ll get back to you.”

The phone rang again as soon as I hung up. “Hello.”

“Can I speak to Crystal, please?”

“Uncle Billy? Is that you?”

Crystal leapt up beside me.

“This is Uncle Billy. Is this Artie?”

“Yes, Billy.”

“Is Crystal there?”

I passed her the receiver.

He spoke for a while. Head bowed, Crystal listened. “Come on up, Billy.” She hung up. “What could I do?” she asked me. “He was right around the corner.”

“It’s okay.”

“There’s probably a string of assholes following him. But I couldn’t tell him to hang around on the street. Could I?”

“Of course not.”

“I gonna go down and clear de way for him,” said Calabash, sliding a gun into his waistband. I’d noticed that as time had passed, the guns Calabash stashed on his person had grown larger and larger. This one looked like a small bazooka.

I walked him to the door. “Be careful of yourself first, Calabash.”

“Don’t worry about dot.”

When I returned to the bedroom, I found Crystal supine on the bed, her arm across her eyes.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I was trying to remember what it was like. When we’d just met. When we’d make love. They took that from us.”

“I still love you.”

“You do?”

I lay down beside her. I felt inopportunely aroused.

Calabash knocked his tap-tap-tappity-tap on the front door.

I got up to open it, and Calabash ushered Uncle Billy into the room. He was the picture of contrition, hands clasped in front, head down. I wanted to say something encouraging, but I couldn’t think what.

“I hope you’re not mad at me, Crystal.”

“Don’t worry, Uncle Billy, I’m not. I’m just glad to see you safe.”

Uncle Billy, knees crackling, crouched laboriously to pet Jellyroll. I made coffee. We sat in the living room after Calabash and I dragged chairs in from the dining table.

“Where have you been, Uncle Billy?”

“I been hiding. People’ve been after me. That’s why I decided to drown…like Timmy. But that didn’t work out so good. I hid on Arnie Lovejoy’s boat—remember Arnie?—but that didn’t work out so good, either. People came. I’m tired of hiding, so I came here.” He looked from one to the other of us and, finally, even to Jellyroll. Jellyroll licked his hand. I thought Billy was going to cry. “I never loved Timmy more’n I loved you, Crystal. I loved you both.”

“I love you, too, Uncle Billy.”

“He liked me to call him Timmy. He was like a son to me.”

“Do you mind if I call him Trammell?”

“No.”

How long had it been since I’d heard a measure of jazz?

“Uncle Billy, Trammell didn’t really drown. He faked it. He stole money from thieves and had to disappear.”

“No,” said Billy categorically.

“No?”

“Timmy wouldn’t do that to me. He wouldn’t. I mean, he’d steal things. Timmy was not a good person, but he wouldn’t go away like that and not tell me where he went. We was partners. No, not Timmy. Timmy just wouldn’t.”

“You were partners?”

“Yes, partners.”

“In what?”

“Well, before Timmy drowned, he said I ought to have money for the Golden Hours and things like expenses. He put the money in a bank in Nassau, Bermuda. He said he knew he didn’t treat you too good. He said when I died, I could give the money to you, and then maybe things’d be even. See, I told Timmy I knew he didn’t treat you good as a husband, but it takes a man to be a good husband. Timmy wasn’t a man. Timmy was still a boy. That was Timmy’s problem. He did as best as boys can.”

“Uncle Billy, do you mean to say you have their money now?” Crystal asked, as if speaking to a child.

“Their money? It’s our money. Timmy gave it to us because he was sorry.”

“Okay. But you have it?”

“Oh, yes. Well, no, I mean, I don’t have it in my wallet or anything like that. It’s in Bermuda. But I have the papers. I have the papers right here.” Uncle Billy began searching himself, patting his pockets. He felt something inside his shirt and smiled at his success. He removed a green bankbook, much like a standard savings-account passbook. He handed it to Crystal.

Crystal opened it. Then she gasped. Her hand went to her mouth. Staring at Uncle Billy, she passed the little book to me.

I gasped, too. The book was stamped with twin rearing lions between which was printed “International Bank of the Bahamas” in fancy script. No transactions were noted, merely a balance in stark, naked figures: $34,888,000.27. I had to read it three times before I got it straight, before the million place became clear.

“That’s a lot of money, Billy,” Crystal squeaked.

“I know it. It’s all yours.” He was smiling now.

I flipped a page, and there it was:

 

Account: Crystal Spivey

Golden Hours Billards

254 Avenue X

Brooklyn, New York, USA

 

I handed the book back to Crystal. Absently, she passed it to Calabash. The sum knocked him back a half stride. Even Jellyroll didn’t pull down that kind of jack.

I began to feel deeply frightened at the size of this monster. Trammell had stolen nearly thirty-five million bucks, yet nobody seemed to care. They only wanted the tape. I already knew those assholes were willing to kill. Mere money never impressed me as much as murder, but there was something about seeing that absurd figure next to Crystal’s name. It felt like her death warrant.

“See, it’s real easy,” said Billy. “You just call a man at the bank and tell him your number and the password. You can change the number and the password anytime you want. The password used to be Barraclough, but I don’t know why. So I changed it to Zuzu, like Arnie’s boat. And I put it in your name.”

Looking at the bankbook, Calabash said, “Dis is Nassau in de Bahamas. Dis ain’t any Bermuda. Dis my home. We can take care o’ t’ings in de Bahama Islands, me and Uncle Fergus and a bunch o’ de hardboys.” When Calabash speaks, people tend to listen. Was he taking over? I desperately hoped so. He put a hand the size of a welding glove on Uncle Billy’s shoulder. “Say, Mister Billy, it time for you to go on a trip to my island. Nobody bother you dere. You can sit on de patio and watch de sea roll in and out.”

“Bermuda?”

“No, not Bermuda. De Bahamas.”

“Nobody’ll bother me there?”

“Nobody. My own uncle take care o’ dot.”

Uncle Billy looked at Crystal. “Will you be coming?”

“…Yes.”

“You all be my guests.”

“Gee,” said Uncle Billy, “I always wanted to go to Bermuda.”

“No, not Bermuda. De Bahamas. You like de Bahamas even better.”

“How old is your uncle?”

“He about yer age.”

“Does he like to fish?”

“Sure. Uncle Fergus love to fish.”

“Gee, maybe we can fish together…Can I go home and pack?”

“No, Uncle Billy,” said Crystal, “I think the idea is you go right now. Can you do that?”

“Well, I didn’t know what to do when I came here. I saw what they did to my house. I can’t go there. So…yes. But I don’t have any money.”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Crystal with a quick glance at me.

It was all I could do not to giggle like a chucklehead.

 

So there it was, decided. Uncle Billy would leave for Poor Joe Cay. Calabash made a couple of phone calls to arrange for members of his family to meet Billy in Nassau, where they would catch a flight to the airport on Eleuthera. From there, they’d travel by boat to Poor Joe Cay.

Uncle Billy began to cry as the final arrangements fell into place. His Adam’s apple bounced pathetically.

“I go down first,” said Calabash. He stuffed a howitzer into his belt and went down to scout things out. Five minutes later, Billy and I went down. I didn’t see Calabash on the street

I let the first cab go by just in case it was a setup. I let another go by and hailed the third. My street was nearly empty of pedestrians. A happy young couple strolled toward us, he carrying a bottle of wine in a bag, she a bouquet of flowers. I thought wanly about Crystal’s fuchsia top and the old days of a week or so ago. I opened the cab door for Uncle Billy.

He paused before he got in, looked at me through wet eyes, then hugged me tightly. I watched the back of the old man’s head disappear around the corner. It was dark now, ominous black clouds gathering to the southwest over the river.

I looked around for Calabash. But he was lurking somewhere in the darkness. Calabash can disappear behind a parking meter.

“Ach, Artie!”

I nearly jumped off the sidewalk. My heart pounded as I turned to face Mrs. Fishbein.

“I t’ought you vas a mugger. Waiting to pounce. Boof, boof on za brain—you’re a turnip.” Then she went into the building.

But if Mrs. Fishbein could sneak up on me, who else—? I spun around twice. There was a little old man, like the ghost of Mrs. Fishbein’s husband, waddling up the street. As he got closer, I saw that he was a Hasidic Jew, in black coat, pants, hat, and earlocks.

I gave Mrs. Fishbein time to get into the elevator before I returned to the lobby. I had barely unlocked the street door when I heard a muffled squeal behind me—

It was the Hasidic man. His feet hung twelve inches off the pavement. He dangled from Calabash’s enormous arms. They were wrapped around the Hasid’s head. His hat fell off. I saw that the earlocks were attached to his hat, as opposed to his head. In the streetlight, I could see the top of the man’s head. The hairless crown was ringed by a jagged, purple scar. I opened the door.

Calabash carried him past me toward the elevator and walked his face right into the wall beside the call button. “I gonna break your sneaky neck like a twig in a hurricane.”

“Talk!” said Norm, muffled. “Talk first!”

Calabash dropped him, spun him around, and pinned his throat to the wall with one hand.

“Invite me up?” sputtered Norm.

Mercifully, the elevator arrived empty. Calabash heaved him in hard.

“If you keep doing that, I’m going to report you to B’nai B’rith.”

That’s what we needed, spook wit.

“So where’s Uncle Billy off to in such haste?”

“The Klondike. There’s been a big strike. He’s a prospector at heart.”

“Cold in the Klondike. Me, I prefer the lower latitudes. Say the Bahamas.”

The elevator arrived at my floor. Calabash peeked out, found the hallway empty, and led us to my door.

“Evening, Crystal,” said Norm congenially.

“Who are you supposed to be?” she said, looking him up and down.

“I’m Rebbe Armbrister. Calabash knocked off my hat. Without it, my disguise is incomplete.”

“When are you going to get out of our lives?”

“Chet Bream is dead,” said Norm. You could tell he threw it out to test our reaction.

“Did you kill him?” I said.

“No.”

“Then your friends did it?”

“They’re no friends of mine. Sure, we were associates in wartime. The Cold War. A great war, but it’s over now, we just have to live with that. The police stopped two guys in a moving van. Turned out the van contained Chet Bream’s body. Shots were exchanged. A policeman was critically wounded, and the two guys were killed. During this time, Chet remained in the van. Chances are the van was stolen and can’t be traced to Concom, but the Concom folks are very nervous, and they’re doing stupid things as a result.”

“They killed Chet? Concom?”

“Sure. It’s not Tiny’s style. He’s a businessman. Maybe Trammell, but I doubt it. I doubt the hoods did it. Germ warfare isn’t their style, either. They did Danny Barcelona the way hoods do people—an honest bullet in the brain. That leaves Concom, in my opinion.”

“How do you know about the germ warfare? How do you know they didn’t shoot Chet in the brain?”

“I told you, I survive by knowing.”

“Do you know that I have the tape?”

“Do you? Really?”

I repeated Chet’s words to me about the details of the nonexistent tape. I didn’t mention God or Joseph, George Bailey or Clarence. Norm seemed to believe me.

“Where is it now?”

“Bedford Falls.”

“Upstate?”

“Bedford Falls, Pottersville. The fact is, it’s everywhere.” I tried to sound absolutely confident. I knew exactly what I was doing. I could pull this off. Hell, I had no doubts. I was up to this intrigue. Streams of sweat ran down the insides of my thighs.

“You mean, you’ve made arrangements?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’ve taken precautions?”

“Of course. I’ve made copies. I won’t say how many. I put one in my safe-deposit box. Safe-deposit boxes, as you probably know, are routinely opened in the event of the depositor’s death. I’ve placed the other copies with friends. I told them that if anything happened to Crystal, Calabash, Jellyroll, or myself—even if one of us died from natural causes—then they are to take it directly to the cops and the Times. Oh, I’ve also included an essay telling the story and naming names, including yours.”

Norm was thinking. He removed his Hasidic coat and dropped it over the back of a chair. “Mind if I sit?”

We sat around the table. Jellyroll circled several times and flopped under it. Silence.

Norm was thinking…“I like it. Yes sir, I like it.”

“What do you mean you like it?”

“I mean I like it. The intrinsic trouble with tapes is that tapes can be duplicated, just as you’ve done. Hell, say I took measures to acquire the tape from you—I won’t, but just say—what would I have? A tape, not the tape. How could I ever know I had all the copies? I couldn’t. No, the disposition of the tape is much more important than the actual possession of it. And I like that you have the tape, as opposed to another.”

“Why?”

“Well, because I don’t trust them any more than they trust me. I don’t say I trust you, either, but your motives are simpler. You just don’t want to end up like Chet Bream. That makes me feel secure, same way I felt back during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The tape won’t come back to haunt me, because you can’t do anything with it. You have to leave it in Pottersville. If you did anything with it, then its value as a life-insurance policy would plummet to nil, right? Is that how you’re seeing it?”

“Of course.”

“There’s just one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“The others need to know you have it.”

“Why don’t you just tell them?”

“I know you’ll find this hard to understand, but they don’t entirely trust me.”

“Imagine that.”

“Yes. So it would be best if you sent them a copy of the tape. Show them the policy as it were.”

“I don’t have one here, and I’m not about to go get a copy after all the trouble I went to hiding them.”

“You’d never know who was following you?”

“Right.”

“How do you feel about telling them you have it?”

“By phone?”

“It would be much better if you told them in person.”

“Why?

“These are suspicious men.”

“You can tell them I’ve seen the tape. How else would I know about its contents?”

“I’ll be right there with you. I like it. I told you. So don’t worry, they’ll have to like it too. Look, this is the best way to get me—and them—out of your lives. I promise.”

“Crystal stays here,” I said. “Just me.”

“And me,” said Calabash, staring holes in Norm’s forehead.

“Bullshit,” said Crystal. “I’m in this, too. Don’t try to be some Saturday morning TV hero. I hate that.”

“God, don’t you love strong women?” said Norm. “My wife Tran is like that, a strong woman. Defy her wishes on a thing, and she’ll mortar your position. In fact, she did a couple times. It was in Quang Tri Province up near—Oh well, that’s old soup, I guess. Nobody cares about the Nam now. Want me to set it up? A face-to-face? What say?”

“I say de same t’ing I said to you in de Posh van.”

“What’s that, Calabash?”

“Anything goes wrong—even if nothin’ go wrong, if I don’t like de look on any mon’s face—you de first one I kill.” He lifted his big gun out from under the table. He reached across the table and pressed the muzzle against Norm’s forehead. When he pulled the gun away, a red ring remained.