CHAPTER ONE
Eddie Dubinsky lifted his
glass off the bar, swirled the ice, then
toasted himself and took a sip. He toasted the new pair of shoes
with
lifts, the two new suits, the sub-let with a view that wasn’t
a brick
wall.
He was toasting the thirteen
hundred bucks in his new calfskin
wallet when there was a sudden lull in the bar and he caught
a few
words of the old Bobby Darren song. Mackey’s
... back in to-own. He
emptied his drink and smiled.
He held one finger up for
another Scotch, glanced in the long
mirror behind the rows of booze. The skinny Asian girl in the
corner
booth wasn’t alone anymore. He’d taken too long, thinking
about
how he should move on her. He was out of practice. Sixteen months
out of practice.
She cozied up to the beefy
guy who’d beat his time, and Eddie
watched the guy’s hand move down from her bare shoulder
to the
edge of her orange tube top. Watched the tips of his fingers
slide
inside. He bet every buck in the calfskin wallet she wasn’t
more than
fourteen. He imagined the smooth cone shape of her nipple, the
small firm bulge of her breast against his palm, and swallowed.
The bartender set the Scotch
in front of him and he took a sip,
stopped thinking about the girl, started thinking about Raymond
instead. The son of a bitch. Wouldn’t give him the time
of day
anymore. Threw him out of the fucking house. Wouldn’t even
give
him his job back. Your own brother threatening to castrate you
for
Christ’s sake. “I’ll cut your fucking dick off
if you ever come near this
house again. You hear me, Eddie? You understand?”
Like he’d ever go near
that whiny little brat of Raymond’s. With
a face like a goddamn monkey. He shook his head. What fucking
Raymond needed to worry about was finding
someone to lay her.
He watched the beefy guy
and the Asian getting it on right
there in the booth, used the mirror to see what else might be
available. But there wasn’t a thing worth getting off the
stool for. So
tonight he’d have to be satisfied with the idea of screwing
Raymond.
Better if the guy knew he was being
ass-fucked. But that was okay.
Eddie knew, and for now that was enough. He chuckled, and the
guy
sitting next to him glanced up.
“Private joke,”
Eddie said. The guy looked away.
It was like being in prison
had honed him. Made him sharp. All
his hunches paying off. And Ruthie sending him one prospect
a week,
so now he had three routine husband tails, a guy who wanted
to
make sure his fiancee was really going everywhere she said she
was,
and the custody thing. All nice and easy and all lucrative as
hell.
He folded the edge of his
napkin into a nice neat line.
And to think he’d almost
backed off Ruthie. Her sitting there
blubbering about why was he doing this to her, why? Whining
about
what if she lost her job, what then? “Who’s gonna
feed my kids,
Eddie? You? You gonna feed my kids if Raymond fires me cuz of
you?” It had almost worked. He’d almost said, “Fuck
you,” and
walked out.
After all, she was
family. The kid who’d taken the blame when
he’d unleashed that goddamn dog of Nona’s just as
the fruit delivery
truck went flying by. The kid who used to let him feel her up
under
the dining room table. The first girl he’d ever laid.
She’d always been easy,
Ruthie. Still was. Afraid of anything,
everything. And this time all it took was a suggestion. That
a word to
Vic about which one was his kid and which one wasn’t might
make
him forget his promise not to beat her up anymore.
She’d caved like a
chocolate soufflé. Poor Ruthie. Poor scaredshitless-
of-her-own-shadow Ruthie.
And so while Raymond was
out of the office, she let Eddie sift
through the call memos. He picked the jobs he wanted by the
phone
exchange -- areas where the per capita income exceeded the number
of figures he’d worn on his prison shirt. Where people
had names like
… Cecile Davenport.
“What if one of them
calls back to check you out? What if the
rich old lady calls? What do I do then?”
“You think quick, Ruthie.”
He traced her chin with his finger,
while she sat so still you’d have thought he was doing
it with a razor
blade, “and you tell her what an upstanding member of the
private
dick community your cousin Eddie is.”
But like he’d figured,
no one called back. Especially the
Davenport woman. Because like all her kind, she didn’t
want to have
any more to do with this thing than she absolutely had to. And
that
first phone call to get it rolling was hard enough. Holding
his business
card by one corner, like it smelled or something.
But he knew how to behave.
How to gain their trust. How to be
solicitous, but businesslike. And best of all he knew what price
they
were willing to pay to slake their guilt.
He drained the glass, banged
it on the bar to get the
bartender’s attention and nodded for another.
Anyway, the husbands, the
fiancee ... they were all guilty as
hell. Though he hadn’t told any of his clients that yet.
The bartender set the new
drink in front of him, slid the empty
glass down behind the bar.
They’d get their proof
when he figured they’d paid for it.
He picked up the glass and
sipped it down a quarter inch.
The custody thing, though,
that wasn’t going like the others.
But for a while he’d keep sending the old lady his reports,
keep
working them so they had a hint of something sordid enough to
keep
the checks coming. And eventually the daughter-in-law would
fall.
Because sooner or later everybody did.
He drained his drink in
three neat swallows, tossed a twenty on
the bar, gave the Asian girl one more look and walked outside.
The
air was warm and damp, too bright from all the neon signs, silent
after the bar.
He drove slowly, carefully,
a little too drunk to cope with
anything sudden, pulled into a parking space next to the apartment
building and bumped the wall. He killed the lights, then the
engine.
Inside, he made his way
through the dark living room, his
footsteps echoing off the walls, into the bedroom and flicked
on the
lamp beside the bed. It cast a dull red glow over the rumpled
sheets,
over the TV sitting on the floor, the pile of dirty clothes,
the empty
Styrofoam cups and plates.
He took off his jacket and
glanced at the photos tacked along
the wall above the bed, puckered his lips and made a kissing
sound.
His very own family album. His wayward cousins. His bread, his
meat. All of them feeling up, fucking, groping, tongue-kissing.
Busy
diddling the boss, the secretary, the next door neighbor. Diddling
anyone who‘d let them.
He kicked off his shoes,
took off his tie, his shirt and dropped
them on the floor.
He started to turn on the
TV, then stopped and looked back at
the wall, at the bottom row, the pictures of the rich bitch’s
daughterin-
law.
All except her. All except
Mason Gilbert. A fucking nun, that’s
what she was. And what if she stayed
that way?
Outside, a siren hooted
and he bent down and fished a
cigarette and matches out of his shirt, walked over to the window.
He
could only milk Cecile Davenport so far. He lit up, inhaled,
blew the
smoke through the screen out into the night. He’d been
hoping to get
a brand new set of wheels out of the old lady, and not getting
them
was going to disappoint the hell out of him. He scratched his
chest.
He hated being disappointed.
He walked back to the bed
and looked at the pictures in the
bottom row again. Maybe he could play this one both ways. Custody
wasn’t always a matter of what was going on in your bed,
and he
could come up with lots of stuff any six figure lawyer could
twist into
neglect. He ran his eye along the photos. Mason Gilbert walking
down a sidewalk, getting out of her car, sitting on a bench
with her
head in a book, her and the kid crossing a parking lot.
Mothers were funny about
losing a kid. And even if she was
older than he liked, still, she wasn’t bad. And not getting
the car
might be a little less painful if he was offered some other
form of
compensation.
He leaned toward the pictures.
“And if I advise you of the
possible consequences of non-cooperation,” he said out
loud, “I have
the feeling you’d be willing to do just about anything
in exchange for
a nice clean report.”
His eyes slid to the last
photo. The kid, Frances, standing in the
front yard in a two-piece bathing suit. Skinny long legs, one
hip out,
head tilted like she was listening for something.
He looked at it for a while,
then he pulled the thumb tack out
and lay down on the bed, propped the picture against his thighs,
took
a final drag on his cigarette, and wondered for the first time
exactly
how old she was. |
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