TWENTY-FOUR

IT WAS RAINING hard, the first rain in weeks, as we crossed Central Park on the Ninety-sixth Street transverse…Was this the stupidest trip I’d ever embarked upon? What were we going to do, exactly? Were we going to walk into that nest of snakes and say, “We got the tape, neh-neh-neh”? Norm was all for the idea, which made it even more dangerously stupid, but we were doing it. We were on the way.

He sat in the front seat with the cab driver, a Sikh in a purple turban. Crystal, Calabash, and I were crammed into the backseat, and though we didn’t speak, it was clear they were as tense as I was. We were traveling at high speed. The windshield wipers were having no effect at all. Sheets of water seemed to be flowing under them. We were traveling blind at high speed. It began to dawn on me that we had as much to fear from the trip across town as from the Concom crazies at our destination.

Basically a roofless tunnel, the transverse cuts through the park deep below its surface. Black rock walls climb twenty feet on either side of the roadbed. There are no streetlights down here. There used to be, but not now, because of the cutbacks. It felt like we were speeding along the abyssal plain beneath the Atlantic Ocean. The Sikh accelerated.

I glanced sideways at Crystal’s face. I missed her. We’d been in constant close proximity of late but not together in the sense of carefree lovers who only have eyes for each other. But that, I supposed, blasting through deep water, was romantic twaddle. Bank fraud, illegal weapons deals, generalized corruption in high places, murder—that was the stuff of reality. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her elegant profile and felt deeply in love with it. She noticed me looking and took my hand in hers, but she didn’t look back. She continued to peer straight ahead at the onrushing blackness broken only by hurtling headlights passing us like tracer bullets.

“What de fook’s de hurry?” Calabash wondered.

What did we have on our side against the conspiring crazies? A 1946 Frank Capra film about the intrinsic goodness of mankind. Powerful stuff. The driver leaned over his wheel, pressed his nose against the windshield, and put the hammer down, I guess on the reasoning that since we couldn’t see anything anyway, the faster we went, the less time we’d spend in harm’s way. Then I realized that Norm was chatting casually with the driver in his native tongue. Norm must have subverted India at one time or another in his career, before he died.

“Hey, Norm,” I said, “tell him to slow down.”

“No, no, can’t do that, at least not directly. That would be an affront.”

Speaking of affronts, I considered borrowing Calabash’s howitzer, placing the muzzle against Norm’s medulla oblongata, perhaps steadying the gun butt on the back of his seat, for at this speed, careening crazily, my hand would be unstable, and blowing out his brains. “Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight, come out tonight?” Finally, we emerged and stopped at the light on Fifth Avenue. Those of us in the backseat took the opportunity to breathe. Then we sped down Fifth, where at least it was bright and we could see the car that would kill us.

Number 919 Third Avenue had its entrance on Fifty-fourth Street. It was no different than dozens of other high-rise office buildings in midtown. Commercial real estate had sprouted like fungus on fallen tree trunks during the heedless expansion in the eighties, but now it was over. Several big buildings within sight of 919 stood incomplete, nothing but ruddy steel skeletons above the fifth or six floors. Real estate tapes call them “see-throughs.”

Incongruously, a fact of Manhattan geology popped to mind. The reason there are high-rise office buildings in midtown and in the Wall Street area but nowhere else is that two great domes of solid granite bulge to the surface at those points. Only there can the island support such gargantuan weight. Anywhere else, high rises would sink to the size of duplexes. So what? Why’d I think of that? People ascending the gallows probably recall trash facts to deflect their minds from the unthinkable at hand…Yeah, but we had the tape, goddamnit. They couldn’t touch us with the tape. They wouldn’t dare mess with George Bailey.

Norm paid the cab fare while Calabash, Crystal, and I hustled under the shelter of the cantilevered portico. Bleary-eyed contributors to the GNP were still straggling out of the revolving door. Most, regardless of sex, wore blue or gray pin-striped suits and carried leather briefcases bulging with yellow-paper homework. They looked up at the driving rain as if weather were a phenomenon unfamiliar to them, before they ran to waiting cars. If I had become a lawyer instead of the owner of a wealthy dog, I would have worked in a place like this, where you couldn’t even end it all by hurling yourself from an upper story, because the windows don’t open in high-rise office buildings.

Norm trotted up and stopped us before we entered the lobby. “See the security desk?” How could we miss it? It was a Kafkaesque structure, built high up against the towering black marble wall, from which uniformed guards stared down at passersby with indifferent looks on their faces. “They’ll want us to sign in. Don’t sign your real names.”

I signed “Samuel Beckett.” I didn’t see what the others signed. On the guard’s clipboard there was a column for time in. It was 9:15. I longed for the time when we’d sign out. The guards gave us guest badges to pin to our chests.

“Lighten up,” said Norm as we ascended in the elevator at ear-popping velocity. “This’ll be a piece of cake.”

“If it ain’t den I shoot you right tru de guest badge.”

“I hear you, big guy,” Norm chuckled.

The elevator, one in a bank of six, opened on the forty-ninth floor. There was a blank wall to our left. To our right, there was a glass wall. Affixed to the glass, brushed-aluminum letters a foot high said concom international securities.

Beyond the glass door was an empty receptionist’s desk. Norm stuck a pass card in the mouth of a slot beside the door. When a buzzer sounded, Norm pushed the door open.

The furnishings inside were as plush and as individualized as any you can order from an office-supply catalog. A long, narrow, naked hallway led away to our left and ended in a T, but before we followed Norm down its length, Calabash stopped him by grabbing a huge handful of the back of his windbreaker.

“Where we goin’, Norm?”

I glanced at Calabash. His face was fixed and hard. It was a frightening face. His whole demeanor suggested sudden impact, disfiguring violence. At least that was in our favor.

“We’re going down here, then to the left to a room. Don’t worry about a thing, big guy.”

“Don’t tell me not to worry. What’s dis room like?”

“You mean in terms of entrances and exits?”

“Of course.”

“One door. No other way in or out. Unless you take the quick way down.” Norm thought that was a hoot. “It’s like a boardroom. You ever been in a boardroom before?”

“Fook no. Who’s gonna be in dis boardroom?”

“Two or three people. Plus us.”

“Who’s gonna be outside?”

“I can’t say for certain. They might have some security types hanging around, but they won’t do anything untoward without orders, and since you have the tape, they won’t get any untoward orders.” Big grin. “Ready?”

We turned left at the T. That led to more of the same hallway. We walked to the end of it. We took another left. More hall. Was this it? Was Concom International nothing but a maze of narrow hallways? We made two more turns. No offices. The only break in the endless hall was a door to the women’s rest room. I was completely disoriented, and the rest room reminded me I had to pee. Still the hall continued. Left, right, left. I was beginning to conclude that this was some kind of cruel hoax when the hall opened onto something like a room. There were more elevators on one side, a closed wooden door with a lever-type handle on the other. That door, apparently, was our destination. Without Norm, we’d never find our way out.

“I don’t like de elevators here. Anybody could come right up after us.” Calabash leaned against the wall near the door and said quietly to Crystal and me, “I gonna wait right here. When you go in, if you don’t like somethin’, give out a shout, den hit de floor, ’cause I gonna be comin’ in to shoot everybody in de room. Includin’ Norm.”

“I heard you the last four times you threatened my life. Come on, I’m with you, big guy.”

“Quit callin’ me dat or I do it right now.”

“Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight, come out—” kept rattling around in my brain.

Norm opened the door and walked right in, barged in, more accurately, a bantam-rooster badass with a hole in his head leading us to—

Crystal went in next. I heard her gasp. I very nearly decided, fuck it, I’m going to shout for Calabash before I even see what’s back there, but I didn’t. I looked—

Two men sat side by side at the long teak table directly across from the door. Arms folded across his chest and a mean look on his face, DiPietro stood behind them.

Tiny Archibald sat at the table. His eyes were red, and tears tracked his face, puddled in the folds of his jowls. But because of the man who sat beside him, I noticed Tiny, and his tears, almost incidentally—

The man who sat beside him wore a black hood pulled down over his head. Through the eye holes I could see glasses with wood-colored frames. Crystal and I stood rooted in the doorway staring at the hooded man. He wore an expensive Italian suit over a powder-blue shirt, and a natty red tie. He could have passed for a respectable businessman, except that most respectable businessmen don’t wear hoods over their heads. The front of it puffed out, then deflated with each breath.

Norm didn’t bat an eye at the hooded man, either because he expected a hooded man at the conference table—it was that kind of conference—or because in Norm’s circles, folks generally wore hoods. He sat down across the table from Tiny and the hooded man and motioned for us to join him. We took seats on his left. That left about twenty vacant seats around the table.

“Hey, thanks a lot for keeping the store open late,” said Norm with his grin.

“Can we get on with it, Norman?” asked the hooded man. “You’re a thorn under the saddle of progress.”

“Yeah, well,” said Norm, “who fucked up?” Norm glanced pointedly at DiPietro, then back to the hooded man. “Me? No indeed, not me. You and Mad Dog back there fucked up. Who drew civil authorities on our ass? Not Norm. Norm didn’t go around shooting cops and alienating the civil authorities. However, that is your problem, it has nothing to do with me. I’m here to remove a mutual problem, and what do I get instead of thanks? I get called a thorn…Hey, Tiny, what’s the problem there? Buck up. Why does the big guy weep?”

“Haven’t you heard?” asked the hooded man.

“No, I’ve been busy solving our mutual problem. Heard what?”

“Trammell’s dead.”

Crystal stiffened, but she didn’t make a sound.

“He is?” said Norm. “Who did it?”

“Nobody did it. It was in the newspaper! Don’t you read the papers? Does nobody read the newspapers?”

Crystal and I hadn’t read the papers.

“If nobody reads the newspapers, why am I sweltering under this hood?”

“So what happened to him?” asked Norm, clearly surprised and suspicious.

“The fool drowned! He fell out of that boat and—drowned. The paper said his body had been in the water at least a week. It washed all the way to Sandy Hook. Partially decomposed, was how the paper put it.”

Norm shook his head. “I’ll be damned, he really drowned? Tch, tch.” Norm chuckled at the irony. At least, that was the only thing I could see to chuckle at. Bruce had tried to tell us the truth—that too was ironic.

“Well,” said Tiny Archibald in a petulantly teary voice, “I’m glad you find that so amusing!”

“Come on, Tiny,” said the hooded man, “he was a fucking crook. How much did he steal from VisionClear? Ten million? Twenty million?”

“So what! You’re a crook! I’m a crook! So’s Norm!”

“I’m no crook,” said Norm.

“He was like a son to me!” Tiny blubbered.

“Could we not get all mawkish here? We still have the question of the tape to deal with.” The man adjusted his hood—it had pivoted when he’d turned his head, and the eye holes had gotten out of place.

“Trammell didn’t make the tape,” said Norm.

“No?” said the hooded man. “Who did?”

“Chet Bream—that journalist Mad Dog shot full of shit—he made the tape.”

“Boy, you better quit calling me Mad Dog.”

The hooded man held up his hand to quell any building internecine squabbles. “How do you know that, Norman?”

“Because Bream gave it to Mr. Deemer. What do you think we’re all here for?”

“How do I know? You didn’t exactly make that clear on the phone, Norman.”

“You’re the Fifth Man,” I said in a voice I tried to pump up with false confidence.

“The Fifth Man? What are you talking about, the Fifth Man?”

“Your back is to the camera,” I said. “You can see the other crooks—Danny Barcelona, Trammell Weems, Tiny Archibald, and Norm—”

“I’m not a crook.”

“The five of you are sitting under a green umbrella near Tiny’s pool.” My forehead began to sweat. “A party’s going on in the background. Every now and then, guests cross in front of the camera. That wasn’t so shrewd, discussing money laundering in the middle of a lawn party.” Was I pushing it too hard? A bead of sweat pooled in the inner corners of my glasses and threatened to run the length of the lenses, but I pressed on. “All we want, Crystal and I, is to be left alone. You leave us alone, and no one will ever see that tape. However, if anything happens to either of us, anything at all, then it goes straight to the newspapers, the cops, and every other law-enforcement organization in the country. I’ve already made copies of the tape and set up the machinery for that to happen if any harm comes to us.”

“There you have it,” said Norm. “Personally, I like it. Artie and Crystal will get out of the country while you clean up the mess you made. And you can rest assured that for reasons too obvious to mention, the tape won’t ever see the light of day—if you can keep Mad Dog on a stout leash.”

“You better tell him to quit that,” said DiPietro in a cold killer’s voice.

“Hey, you’re an asshole. You could fuck up an ambush,” Norm said. Then back at the hooded man, he said, “In my view that disposition of the tape serves everyone’s best interests.”

“Well, not in my goddamn view!” The hood puffed with each syllable. “And I don’t want a business lesson from a cheap, washed-up little mercenary who had the top of his head blown off by his own goddamn wife! I don’t like it! And that’s who matters here. Concom! Not Tiny, not Trammell, who couldn’t even stay on the boat, not some dumb dago hoodlum, not these two lovebirds, and not you! That tape is a smoking gun! Here we are fourth down and short yardage, and the best you and Tiny can do is bring me Artie and Crystal—who’ve already copied the tape!”

“I didn’t bring them,” said Tiny.

“No, you didn’t, Tiny, you were too crippled with grief for a juvenile delinquent to do squat!” The Fifth Man turned to me and said, “Hey, Artie, did you know these two were working together from the beginning?

“…What?”

“What? I’ll tell you what. It was all a setup. And it was all Norm’s idea.”

“What was?” said Crystal.

“What was? All of it was. Your kidnapping, for example.”

“I don’t understand,” she said in a thick, fear-clogged voice.

“No? You don’t? Allow me to elucidate. Your pal Norman figured out a way to ingratiate himself with you. He had Tiny kidnap you, so he could help Artie rescue you—”

“He poured gasoline all over me,” said Tiny. “That wasn’t part of the script.”

“You see, Norman figured that your crazy old uncle must be connected to Trammell, and the best way to get to him was through you. So he pretended to be your friend.”

We turned to stare at Norm.

Norm didn’t look at us. He continued to stare coldly at the hooded man. Awareness, like a gob of something large and sticky, crawled up the back of my throat and began to make me sick.

“Anyway, the point is I can’t let you live, not with the smoking gun out there. And I’m the boss, right, Norman?”

“Right, you’re the boss.” Norm pulled a gun from somewhere in the small of his back. It had a long, phallic silencer on the end. Norm pointed the gun at Crystal and me. “I’m sorry,” he said. His eyes were flat and fishy. “If you shout for Calabash, I’m afraid I’ll have to shoot you both.”

“That’s the spirit, Norman,” said the hooded man. “And another thing, Norman. It’s you who’s going to get rid of these two and then clean up the mess. I mean, entirely, Norman, tape and all. Is that clear?”

“Yes, boss.”

“Norman,” I said, “you’re a scummy dwarf.”

Norm actually nodded, then he said, “There’s still the question of their bodyguard out in the hall.”

“What?” asked the Fifth Man. “Who?”

“Their bodyguard,” said Norm. “Why don’t you send Mad Dog here out to deal with him?”

“What,” said DiPietro, “you don’t think I can?”

“Sure, I think you can.”

“Then do it,” said the hooded man.

“No violence,” squeaked Tiny. “We can’t have violence in here! How can we cope with corpses in the home office?”

“Leave it to me, lardass.” DiPietro marched around the table and out the door. He pulled it shut behind him with a pop…

No…the door didn’t pop.

Norm’s gun popped, but I didn’t exactly realize it then. Even after I saw the bullet pock the plaster portion of the wall beneath the plate-glass window, I didn’t understand what had happened, not until the Fifth Man’s hood puffed out sharply.

The bullet had gone clear through the center of the Fifth Man’s chest and the back of his chair before it hit the wall. Maybe he never actually understood what had just happened to him. Maybe he was too dead. Somewhere, seemingly far in the distance, Tiny let out a thin squeal.

The Fifth Man sat upright for a while, as if nothing had happened. Blood had soaked the front of his shirt and was beginning to saturate his jacket when he sucked the mask to his face for the last time. Suddenly it, too, filled with blood. Only then did he flop face first onto the boardroom table. His forehead struck with a dull thud. Blood spattered, then pooled around his face and flowed off the edge of the table.

After that thud, the room was filled with a deep silence. It seemed to take days before the silence was broken—by Tiny whimpering. “Don’t shoot me, Norm, don’t shoot me, Norm, please don’t shoot me.”

“I shot him because he didn’t like the tape disposition, Tiny. But I won’t shoot you because you think it’s a good disposition, don’t you?”

“Aw, Norm, I think it’s the best damn disposition I’ve ever heard of in thirty years in the business.”

“That’s good, Tiny.”

Tiny Archibald began to weep. His jowls, like fallen breasts, trembled with his weeping. “But, Norm, what am I going to do with him dead in the main conference room!”

“Well, that’s another reason I’m not going to shoot you—so there’s somebody left to clean up the mess. But stand by, there might be another one to go with him.” Norm put his ear near the door and called, “Oh, Calabash…Hey, big guy…”

“Don’t call me dat.”

Norm turned around and grinned at Crystal and me. “Poor Bernie never had a prayer.”

Bernie? His name was Bernie DiPietro?

“Calabash,” called Norm.

“Yes?”

“The man who just came out the door—”

“Yes?”

“Is he there?”

“He tripped and hurt his neck.”

Norm opened the door, and we went out into the hall. The last I saw of that room: Tiny, weeping, was trying to wipe up about a quart of blood with a Kleenex. Out the window behind him, the lights of Queens flickered in the far distance as if from an airplane.

Bernie lay on his back perpendicular to the elevator door. His head was bent over his chest in a way no living man’s could bend. I could see only the top of his head.

“Well,” said Norm, “I guess this is good-bye.” Then he hugged us, actually hugged us, first one, then the next.

After he hugged Calabash, Calabash said, “I don’t want none of us to ever see you ever again, Norman.”

“But what if the wife and I want to stop by Poor Joe Cay as visitors on our way around the world?”

“Dot’s different. We always welcome visitors. But visitors got to mind their p’s and q’s on de Cay.”

“I hear you, big guy.”