He came at us, with the maître d’ following him.
“Would you look at that,” Browne said. “It’s your cousin, Vee.” He emphasized the word ‘cousin’ as though it were a shared password that should be taken to mean something else. He came right up to me and gripped me around the arm where Joe’s ice pick had sliced me. The pain shot through my arm. I sucked in and held my breath as my stomach turned. “This really is a small hotel, huh? How you doing?” He ground his fingers into my bicep leaving no doubt that he knew exactly what he was doing.
He looked at the maître d’, who was standing a few steps back, his hands out and his mouth open as though he were trying to catch something delicate. “I’ll join this table. How about a bottle of red and a bottle of white? And a scotch for me. Anyone else?” He looked between Vee and me, then turned to the maître d’. “A scotch for both the men.” He released my arm, and I let out my breath.
“We’ve already ordered drinks,” Vee said.
“Good. So you’ll have some more.” He took the chair to my right with Vee on his right. “You don’t mind. The lady and I like to sit together.”
Vee kept her eyes on the tablecloth, her hands fidgeting with the napkin in her lap.
I did what I could to avoid looking at Browne, which wasn’t much. He was younger than I had thought, no more than forty, probably younger. He was balding, his hairline eroded in two fierce arches from his forehead back to the top of his head. He was big in every way, tall, muscular, and fat, if you can imagine that.
Our drinks came, and I took half of mine in one gulp.
“It’s funny us all being here like this,” Browne said. He seemed to revel in our discomfort. “Huh, Vee?” He gave her a playful tap on the chin with a closed fist, but the intent was far from playful, carrying what it did behind it. “Sorry, what was your name?” he said, turning to me. “I was a little distracted the other night, I’m not sure I got it.”
“Shem Rosenkrantz,” I said.
He frowned. “That’s a Jew name, isn’t it? Vee, I didn’t know you were a Jew.”
“I’m not,” Vee said, leading with her whole body. “You see—”
He raised a hand, silencing her without even looking at her. “Sure, sure. It’s not important. We’re all white. What’s it matter? Still, I’d like to have known you were a Jew, Vee. You should have told me that.”
Vee looked at her hands in her lap. A small ring of silence had fallen at the tables around us, like Browne sucked all of the energy out of his surroundings.
“So how are you related? I’m still not clear on that,” Browne said.
“Carlton—” Vee started.
He sneered at her. “I wasn’t asking you. Was I asking you?” She said nothing, her head down, chastised. “You’d think you could knock some sense into her, huh?” He grabbed her bicep as he had grabbed mine, and Vee’s face turned sour, and she looked away from him. I had never seen her so cowed, and it frightened me even more than Browne’s patter. When the maître d’ set down our Scotches, and then turned to a busboy behind him holding the bottles of wine, I picked up my Gin Rickey and drank the rest of it down.
“Shem Rosenkrantz...” Browne said, ignoring the wait staff and still holding Vee by the arm. “Oh, wait, did I read something in the paper about your son getting killed?”
“My son died, yes,” I said. “But he wasn’t killed.”
“Oh, sure. I read the paper,” and he gave me an exaggerated frown. “But I get the real news, too. Outside the paper. He was killed and someone tried to burn his body.”
I tried to tell if he was just talking or if he knew something. It made me nervous, and as I shifted in my seat, I tried to catch Vee’s eye to see if she had told him, but she was sitting with her eyes down like a kid in trouble with her folks.
Browne leaned back, and grabbed a passing busboy by the sleeve. “I want to order,” he said.
“I’ll find your waiter, sir,” the busboy said.
“I don’t want you to find my waiter. I want you to tell him. Whatever’s not on the menu, that’s what we want. All around.” He spun his finger to indicate the whole table.
“Yes, sir,” the busboy said, nodding more than he needed to.
“Ha. ‘Sir.’ And they say kids aren’t learning any manners these days. You’re smart, kid, you’ll go far if you keep that up.” He released the boy, who hurried back in the direction of the kitchen.
Browne grabbed a bottle of wine, and poured Vee a glass before filling his own. “That’s tough about your son,” he said to me. He shook his head. “Nothing’s more important than family. I’ve got three little angels myself, and they’re my whole world. Ask Vee, she’ll tell you. I talk about ’em all the time, don’t I?” He waited. “Don’t I?”
“He does,” Vee said, as though she needed to plead his case to me.
“You see that. I talk about ’em all the time, because there’s nothing more important than family. Isn’t that right, Rosy?”
I exhaled through my nose.
“Yeah, you’re in mourning. I see that. If anything happened to my kids, I’d kill the bastard who did it. I mean with my own hands, right here, I’d kill him.”
The comment made me think about how all three of us at the table had killed someone at some point, and I was planning to do it again. This was what my life had become.
I drank, while Browne stared at me intently. I was supposed to speak. “I feel like my life is over,” I said, and I really did. I’d probably have been happy if Browne’d stood up and shot me right there. Not that he’d ever do that, he was too cagey for that. That’s why he could sit out in public like this, like a respected citizen, because he was a respected citizen. Nothing ever stuck to him.
“You always feel like that,” Vee said, deciding that the best course of action was to ridicule me, which she had a lot of practice doing despite our newfound camaraderie.
“Hey,” Browne snapped. “He’s in mourning.”
“But he does. He whines about everything—”
“If you don’t shut it,” Browne said, “I’m gonna shut it for you.” He brandished his fist. Then turning to me: “You tell me about your son. I want to hear. It’ll be good for you to talk. I’ve learned that the hard way. You can’t keep it all pent up inside you. Go on, tell me.”
I looked at Vee. She looked like she was going to throw up at any moment. She crossed her arms, and rubbed as though she were cold.
“What can I say? I never really knew Joe,” I said.
Browne was nodding with deep understanding.
“He lived with his mother all his life. I wasn’t even there when he was born. I think he was maybe two when I saw him the first time. It seems stupid now. Stupid that I didn’t know him. But I guess I would say that my parents didn’t know me, and I grew up right in the same house with them. They could never understand my love of books. But they read everything I wrote and were proud of me, even if they didn’t understand them.”
“You’re a writer, huh? What do you write?”
“Novels. Movies.”
“What movies?”
I shook my head and shrugged.
He didn’t seem to care that I didn’t have an answer. “My mother lives with us now,” he said. “You got to keep the whole family together, tight.” He reached over and patted Vee on the cheek. The gesture was to show ownership. “You don’t even have a mother, do you, Vee? Nah, no mother’d let her baby be like you.” He looked back at me. “You can’t even imagine loving somebody until you have a kid. You can hardly love a woman,” he said. “Maybe your brother. It’s family, always family.” He looked me straight in the eye. “We never know what we’ve got when we’ve got it, and we always kill what means the most to us, huh?”
I still couldn’t tell if he knew, if Vee had told him. He seemed to be needling me purposely, going on about family, making the remarks about killing, like he really wanted to get to me, to see if I’d crack. Was it possible that he was afraid of being caught up in the murder if it went the wrong way? Nah, he couldn’t worry about that in this town. Nothing would come near him. He wanted to tear me down because I had violated his space, and it was certain he knew about Vee’s and my true relationship.
The food was brought over, a team of three men, two carrying plates, and the chef himself standing next to Mr. Browne with his hands clenched together. He went through a detailed description of what was being served, but I didn’t hear any of it, and I don’t think Browne or Vee did either. When the serving team had left, Browne dug right in. Apparently there was no talking while eating, and since Browne had fallen silent, neither of us was going to make any attempt at small talk.
I finished my scotch and had several glasses of wine too. As Browne was wiping up his plate with a piece of bread he said in a quiet, measured voice, “Rosy. You’re sleeping with my mistress and you’ve been living the high life on my dime.” Vee and I froze. “I could have you killed tonight if I wanted to, but you’ve already taken a pretty bad blow, and you’re set to take another at any moment.”
I knew then that he knew, and I knew my life was over.
“You know,” he said, and took a gulp of wine, “you and I have a mutual friend.”
My stomach boiled. I could feel it in the back of my throat.
“Great guy, out in S.A.”
I knew what he was going to say before he said it, and now I knew who had bought up my debt.
“Hub Gilplaine,” he said.
I felt my face grow slack.
He took another gulp of wine, nodding to indicate he was still going to say something. “Vee tells me that you just came into some money. She said something about two million dollars.”
He paused for me to say something, but I couldn’t even swallow, my mouth was so dry.
“Now, really, I don’t care who Vee sleeps with, I’d be crazy if I did. If it was my wife, I’d kill you both, but Vee, she’s not wife material. She just needs to know who’s boss. And you know who, right, honey?”
Vee looked like she might cry. I’d never seen her like that. She was the strongest, loudest, most demanding woman I’d ever met, and I’d met a lot of loud women. But I knew now that she could be beaten, in both the literal and metaphorical sense, and that my concern over her setting me up for a fall should she take a tumble was absolutely correct. Yes, she had to die. That Browne had gotten it out of her was trouble enough. Now neither of us was going to see any of that money.
“I’ve got a wife too,” I said.
“Good for you. Remind me to send her a present.”
“She’s sick. She needs to stay in the hospital. It’s very expensive.”
“I’m crying on the inside.”
“Please.” I thought about all his talk about family. “She’s the only family I’ve got left,” I tried.
“We’ll take that into consideration,” he said. “Now, you owe me five hundred thousand dollars.”
“But I only owed fifteen grand to Hub,” I said, and could hear I was whining.
“Let me explain to you how this works,” Browne said. “When someone buys up your debt, it’s like refinancing your house. The deal changes. And you owe me five hundred thousand dollars.”
I didn’t say anything.
He stood. “I’ll give you a little time for the estate to come through, but if I don’t get my money on that day, it goes up by five grand a day until I get it, because you’re gonna have the dough.” He stood, and put his hand on the back of Vee’s neck. “That leaves you some for your wife’s hospital bills, right?” Vee winced, and I knew he had tightened his fist. “You didn’t think you were getting any of that money, did you, Vee?”
She looked across at me, and her eyes were shiny with tears. “No.”
“Of course not,” he said. She winced again. “There’s something I’ve got to go see about. You’ll be in the room when I get back.” It was an order. “Here’s the key.” He dropped it beside her, and I remembered I still had the other key to the room. Either he didn’t remember or he didn’t care about getting it back. Instead, he looked at me, and said, “Stay. Enjoy some coffee. Dessert. It’s all on me. I think it’s going to be nice doing business with you, Rosy.” He raised his voice. “Excellent as always,” he said to no one in particular, and he wove his way through the tables and out the door.
The two of us sat in silence. It was as though I’d been hit by a truck. I was so despondent I wished I actually had been hit by a truck. I thought about going out into the street to see if it could be arranged. Wham! Goodbye troubles.
At last, Vee stood up, threw her napkin on the table, and walked out without a word.
I just kept sitting, looking at nothing, and wishing I were dead.