Split Images Page 7

  "Call the bar, see if he's there."

  "You serious?"

  "Walter, the proper response is, yes, Mr.

  Daniels."

  Walter sat at Mr. Daniels's desk, called information, then the Elite Bar, said, "What? You don't mean to tell me." Said, "Yeah?" a couple of times and hung up with an amazed look.

  "You want to hear something? Curtis don't come in no more, he's working, parking cars at the Detroit Plaza Hotel. I never heard of any Plaza Hotel in town."

  "In the RenCen. But why is that hard to believe?"

  "You imagine giving your automobile to Curtis, hand him the fucking keys? That's what he used to do for a living, steal cars, all 'em for parts."

  Mr. Daniels, sitting in the soft glow of the TV picture, didn't say anything for some time. He looked like he was falling asleep, while Walter rolled from one cheek to the other, trying to get comfortable on the straight chair. He said. "Mr.

  Daniels, you mind if I go back to bed?"

  "No, I'll see you in the morning. I want you to pick up some people for me."

  "Pick 'em up where?"

  Robbie gave him a thin smile. "You've got to be the most, if not impertinent, the most informal driver I've ever had."

  "I want to drive," Walter said, "I can drive my own car all I want. I didn't come up here to fucking drive around town. I thought I was hired for a deal you have in mind that I'm the man for it, not driving a limo or living with the help or taking a lot of shit from the cook who's supposed to be Ukrainian and can't even make pirogies, for Christ sake."

  "You're tired," Robbie said.

  "I'll agree with you there," Walter said. "I didn't hire on to drive any fink cops home to their doors either."

  Robbie was pulling himself out of the chair.

  Without a word he walked past Walter to the desk, took a key from his pocket and unlocked a side drawer.

  "Come here."

  Daniels was taking a folder from the drawer now. He opened it and laid a large photograph, at least nine by twelve, on the desk beneath the lamp and looked at Walter.

  "Here he is."

  It was a photocopy, Walter saw, of a photograph that had appeared in a newspaper or magazine, though there was no caption, nothing to identify the man sitting with the small boy perched on his lap, both posed, looking directly at the camera.

  The man, who appeared to be about sixty years of age, was dressed in a formal military uniform laden with gold leaf and braid, rows of decorative medals with ribbons, and wore a fore-and-aft plumed admiral's hat.

  Walter said, "What's he in, Knights of Columbus?"

  Robbie didn't answer, waiting for the right question.

  The boy in the photo, with the same hint of Latin coloring as the man, wore a white double-breasted suit with short pants and appeared to be nine or ten years old.

  Walter said, "I give up. Who is he?"

  "At one time," Robbie said, "one of the world's foremost dictators."

  "I don't recognize him," Walter said.

  "He died," Robbie said, "exactly twenty years ago."

  Walter said, "He's dead? Wait a minute. You mean you want to hit the kid?"

  "The picture was taken thirty years ago," Robbie said. "The kid isn't a kid anymore. He's a grown man, Walter. The guy we're looking for."

  Walter said, "Yeah?" Not too sure. The kid was a nice-looking kid. "This guy, he's pretty bad?"

  Robbie said, "Walter, if I told you what a rotten prick this little boy's turned out to be"--Robbie paused--"Well, you'd want to fly down to West Palm tonight."

  Walter straightened, eyes catching a gleam of lamp-light. "You mean this guy lives down by you?"

  Robbie said, "I don't want to get you all worked up too soon, buddy. We've got time."

  "I'm ready right now," Walter said. "I'm not doing nothing."

  Robbie said, "Yeah, but I am. Let me get some business out of the way, then we'll give it our full attention. How's that sound?"

  "I'm ready," Walter said.

  ANGELA WOKE UP during the night and for a moment didn't know where she was. She had interviewed a woman who used to wake up at least once a week and not know where she was or who the guy was lying next to her; the woman had made a name for herself, subsequently, bringing people into Alcoholics Anonymous. Angela recognized Bryan and went back to sleep. In the morning she used his toothbrush, looked for a bathrobe and couldn't find one. Wearing her navy blue coat over bare skin she made coffee. The morning was bright, trees beginning to bud outside the window; but it was cold in the apartment. She went back into the bedroom, stood looking down at Bryan sleeping and kneed the side of the bed. He woke up, looked at her with instant recognition and a smile, a good sign, and said, "Well, here we are, huh?"

  Angela, holding her wool coat closed but not buttoned, said, "I interviewed a Sicilian one time who married a girl in a big ceremony. This was in New York; they both came here from Sicily when they were kids. They're married, they fly down to Orlando, Florida, on their honeymoon to go to Disney World and that night he finds out his wife isn't a virgin. At least he's convinced she isn't a virgin and he has a fit. He calls up the girl's father and her uncle and complains, like they're responsible for giving him damaged goods. The girl, however, keeps insisting she's a virgin. So the guy takes her to a doctor for a virgin test and the doctor says, well, she might be a virgin, but then again she might not.

  Virgin tests are not all that conclusive. He takes her to two more doctors in Orlando. The first one throws them out. The second one gets the girl up on the table, feet up in the stirrups, takes a look- hmmm, everything looks okay to him; no hymen to speak of, but this doctor's an O. B. and he's not sure he's ever seen a virgin. The husband feels that if it's possible his wife isn't a virgin he isn't gonna go through life wondering about it, picturing her, as he says, with some Puerto Rican or worse. You're not part Puerto Rican, are you?"

  Bryan moved his head back and forth, no, on the pillow.

  "So the guy sends her home to her father and gets an annulment. The girl, virgin or not, feels the guy has ruined her reputation. Even back in Sicily, the village she left as a little girl, they're talking about it, shaking their heads, see, that's what hap-pens when you go to the U. S. of A. So she brings a slander suit against her ex-husband for a million bucks. She's awarded two hundred thousand and the Appeals Court upholds it. When I interviewed the Sicilian guy he said it was not really her lack of virginity that turned him off. It was the fact on the honeymoon she deceived him. She had brought along a contraceptive device, french-kissed like a pro and had her hand on his joint before he'd even taken his coat off. He said, 'I should give a woman like that two hundred thousand dollars? I wouldn't even if I had it, and I don't.' What I'm getting at is, you can try hard to please somebody and in the end, nobody wins."

  Bryan said, "That's an interesting story."

  "I'm not a virgin," Angela said. "I was married; but even if I hadn't been, I still wouldn't be a virgin.

  I'm not giving up anything or making any kind of claim. I know what I want and I know what I don't want."

  Bryan was lying on his back beneath the sheet and blanket, staring up at her, his hands behind his head now.

  He said, "We haven't even done it yet."

  She said, "Do you know why?"

  He said, "I think I was asleep when you came out of the bathroom and you didn't wake me up."

  "So it's my fault." Very dry.

  "No, I held back, it was out of respect.""Respect and dope," Angela said, "and a fifth of Jim Beam. I'll tell you what I don't want first, I don't want it to be a morning quickie."

  Bryan said, "I don't either. I'm hoping it'll last a good ten minutes anyway. Why don't you open your coat?"

  She did. Opened it and closed it, giving him a flash of suntanned skin, small pale breasts and slim white panties.

  Bryan said, "You want to wait, huh? Little candlelight and soft music?"

  She half-closed her eyes, a seductive, bored look, did a li
ttle one-two, one-two go-go step and flashed him again.

  Bryan said, "Okay, tell me what you want."

  Robbie left home at twenty past nine Saturday morning, came out on Lake Shore Drive and had to put his visor down at the spectacle of sun on water.

  Both of his homes faced bodies of water. Not so much because he was drawn to the sight, but because people as rich as Robbie who lived in Palm Beach looked at the Atlantic Ocean and if they lived in Grosse Pointe, where there was less frontage, they caught glimpses of Lake St. Clair; one body of water reaching to Africa, the other, beyond the horizon, to Canada; one a deep blue, the other, green. At least today the lake was a summery green, though it lay flat and empty and it would be a month before the sailboats were out.

  Lake Shore became East Jefferson, leaving behind Better Homes for a run through HUD country to high rises on the river and into downtown some twenty minutes later. Robbie turned his black Mercedes into the Renaissance Center--now the glass-towered face of Detroit in travel-magazine shots--bore to the right and came around to the entrance of the Detroit Plaza Hotel.

  Now the tricky part.

  Spot Curtis Moore. Time it so that Curtis takes the car and no one else.

  Robbie nosed the Mercedes into the dim threelane area beneath the port cochere, hung back to study the people standing around, the traffic flow, the procedure. Then moved up in the outside lane for a closer look. There was more activity than he thought there'd be this time of the morning: maybe a convention leaving or another group coming in.

  There were two doormen dressed as French policemen. Or redcaps. Two young black guys in red blazers handing out claim checks to the parking attendants who wore drab industrial-blue uniforms and were hard to spot in the half-light. They would give part of the ticket to the owner, jump in the car and take a sharp right down a ramp to the garagelevel, then reappear some minutes later, coming out a door that was off behind the cashier's window and marked Authorized Personnel Only.

  Robbie had to leave his car and go over to stand near the door before he was able to identify Curtis.

  No cornrows this morning, a moderate Afro.

  His movement, his walk seemed different too, less studied. He was offstage now doing his work . . . giving Robbie a look as he came past the cashier's window. Do I know you?

  Robbie was wearing sunglasses, dressed in a gray suit and rep tie beneath a buttoned-up raincoat. He held out a ten-dollar bill.

  "I think I'm next."

  Curtis said nothing. He took the bill, went over to one of the parking maitre d's in the red blazers, got a ticket and came back.

  "How long you be?"

  "Couple of hours."

  Curtis tore a stub off and handed Robbie his claim check. Now Robbie watched him slide into the Mercedes and take off as he slammed the door closed; gone.

  Robbie waited near the cashier's window where several people stood with their backs to him. It would take a few minutes. There were no more than four or five parking attendants working, so three or four should come through the Authorized Personnel Only door before Curtis appeared again. Well, you never knew. The door opened, a blue uniform appeared. The door closed and opened again within a few moments and there was Curtis.

  Out of order, out of character. It bothered Robbie, gave him a mild tug of alarm. Even a minor miscalculation would not do in this business; or else several dozen popular novels had given him the wrong information. But he had to proceed right now or throw out the plan and start over.

  He held up his parking ticket, caught Curtis's eye.

  "You just took my car down. I have to get something out of it."

  Now the lassitude, the slow move, the look of indifference as Curtis shifted and got back into character, pleasing Robbie more than Curtis could imagine.

  "What do you do in a case like this?"

  "Want me bring your car back?"

  "That doesn't seem necessary," Robbie said.

  "Why not take me down, show me where the car is?"

  "Ain't allowed. Just the people work here."

  Robbie showed him the folded ten-dollar bill he had ready. "What if I stand over there by the ramp?

  No one will see me. The next car you take down, stop for a second and I'll hop in."

  "I don't have the key."

  Robbie felt instant irritation. "You just took the car down." It couldn't be this complicated."I put the key over in the cashier place"--Curtis pointed--"see, then I come out."

  Robbie said, "Well, then get the key."

  "I don't know I can do that."

  Robbie brought his billfold out of an inside pocket. "I'll bet you twenty bucks you can."

  Curtis went back in through the Authorized Personnel Only door. Robbie waited. Christ, complications. Curtis came back out.

  "I get in a car," Curtis said. "Wait till you see the man owns the car goes inside the hotel. Or you see the dudes in the red coats looking? No deal, man.

  You understand what I'm saying to you?"

  Robbie waited. He watched Curtis go over to pick up a gray four-door Lincoln Continental, watched him get in before he moved to the ramp opening, timing it, hearing the car coming and then a faint squeal of brakes. Robbie opened the door and slid in, the car moving as he slammed the door, down the right-curving chute, Curtis cranking the steering wheel, nicking the Lincoln's bumper along the cement wall.

  Robbie said, "Where's Carlos?"

  The flat tone was just right.

  Curtis was holding the steering wheel cocked, tires squealing on the pavement. Now they were down, rolling along the aisle past rows of cars gleaming in fluorescent light.

  Robbie said again, "Where's Carlos?"Curtis braked abruptly. He said, "I seen you someplace. Else I don't know the fuck you talking about." He twisted around to look past the seats, backed the Lincoln into a space in one effortless move and pulled the keys from the ignition. He got out. Robbie got out.

  Robbie said, "Whether you admit it or not, I know you're with Carlos." Staring at Curtis deadpan, the way it was done.

  "I know I'm in deep shit you don't get out of here," Curtis said, handing Robbie his keys and then pointing. "Your car over there."

  "You gonna wait for me?"

  "I don't know you or what you talking about- fucking Carlo, whatever you saying." Curtis started to walk off. "I be back."

  Robbie liked the way the Mercedes was parked, front end out. He got behind it and lifted the trunk lid. The canvas tool kit lay to one side of the spotless luggage compartment. He rolled it open, took out the frame of his High Standard Field King, then the ten-inch suppressor tube and grooved it onto the frame, hearing the click of the lock mechanism. The target pistol was ready, the clip fully loaded. He ducked down as a Seville came off the ramp and swept past. Robbie remained low. Another car came down. He listened to doors open and thunk closed. He listened to footsteps on the cement floor, heard voices yell back and forth,words that sounded to him like some Gullah dialect echoing through the concrete level, then laughter. Another car came down. He raised enough to watch the parking attendant get into a Buick Riviera and squeal off toward the exit ramp, following an arrow.

  A green Chevrolet station wagon came down, Curtis Moore behind the wheel. Robbie unbuttoned the top half of his raincoat, slipped the target pistol that now measured close to sixteen inches in length inside the coat and held it there, like Napoleon. A car door slammed. Footsteps approached the Mercedes. Robbie moved past the side windows to the hood of his car. Curtis was across the aisle, coming this way.

  Robbie said, "Curtis?"

  Curtis looked up. "You got what you need?"

  Then stopped, looking right at Robbie. "Hey- how you know my name?"

  Robbie wanted to hurry, but he had to play it out. Or else why bother? He said, "Because I know you work for Carlos."

  Curtis was scowling, giving him a mean look.

  "Man, I work for the hotel's who I work for."

  Robbie brought out the pistol, extending it like a blue-stee
l wand and began shooting Curtis, aiming high and seeing Curtis throw his head from side to side doing a backstep dance, the snout of the gun giving off hard punctuations of muted sound, cas-ings ejecting, while off beyond were metallic pings and pops in the cement confines and the windshield behind Curtis sprouted spiderwebs. Robbie jammed the gun under one arm, got to Curtis, who was turning red, smearing chrome and sheet metal red, slipping off the red car fender, got to him and eased him down--eyes glassy, sightless--between the cars, careful not to get any of the red on his raincoat, then shoved Curtis with his foot, hanging onto a door handle for leverage, and got most of him hidden beneath the car. A sporty Chrysler LeBaron. Robbie liked it. It seemed an act of loyalty, the least he could do.

  Driving up the exit ramp in his Mercedes he became inspired and saw a billboard statement in his mind, lettered in red:

  "When it comes to hiding victims I'll take a Chrysler every time!"

  With his name beneath it in neat black type.

  Robinson Daniels, well-known sportsman. Hey, yeah.

  Less than a minute later, at five past ten, the Mercedes turned the corner and pulled up in front of the main doors to the Renaissance Center, the area far less congested than the hotel entrance around on the side. Robbie, in his gray suit, maize and blue striped tie laid across his shoulder by the riverbreeze, stepped out of the car, stood in the V formed by the open door, waved toward the entrance and yelled out:

  "Mr. Cabrera? . . . Here!"

  The buyer from Mexico. A gentleman in a dark suit, followed by a young, darker-skinned gentleman in a dark suit, came out from the entrance shade nodding, smiling all the way to the Mercedes.

  "Sorry if I'm a little late," he said now. "Hi, I'm Robbie Daniels."

  "I hope there's a moral to this," Angela said. "I mean I hope you're making a point." With her dry tone.

  "If I don't forget what it is," Bryan said. He was sitting up in bed now with his coffee, the covers across his waist. White skin, dark hair on his chest.

  Angela sat in an unfinished rocker he'd brought back from Kentucky years ago, Angela still in her navy coat, legs crossed, letting him have a glimpse of tan thigh.