Ghost Music (34 page)

The voices were muffled by the floorboards, but I could recognize Victor. He must have been right below me, because I could hear him roaring,
“—you whore! You goddamned whore! Did you think that I wouldn't find out? Do you think I'm goddamned stupid or something?”

Then I heard a woman. I couldn't tell if it was Kate, but she was obviously sobbing.

Victor shouted some more, and then there was another crash, and a series of bumping noises. The woman screamed.

I listened hard. Last time this had happened, I had made a fool of myself. But this time, I was sure. The bumping noises were definitely coming from downstairs, and that was definitely Victor's voice. That's it, I thought. I don't care if Kate doesn't want me to face down Victor or not, I'm her lover now, and I'm going to protect her.

I was wearing only a T-shirt and shorts, so I dragged on my discarded jeans, almost falling sideways as I did so, and pulled on the mustard-colored sweater that my mother had given me for my last birthday. Then I opened my door, left it on the latch, and bounded barefoot down to the hallway, three stairs at a time. The screaming and shouting and bumping was still going on, and I heard something smash.

I beat on the door with my fist. “Victor! This is Gideon! What's going on, Victor?
Victor!
”

There was no answer, but there was plenty more shouting and bumping. I heard Victor shouting, “If this was one of those Muslim countries, do you know what they'd do to you? They'd stone you, that's what they'd do! They'd fucking stone you!”

I hammered on the door even louder, with both fists. “Victor! This is Gideon! Open the goddamned door, will you?”

Everything went silent. I waited, and waited, wondering if I ought to knock again. But after a while the door opened and
Victor appeared, in a rumpled yellow shirt and purple pants. His hair was all mussed up and his eyes were unfocused, as if he had been drinking.

“Gideon,” he said. “What a surprise. Was I making too much noise?”

“You could say that.” I was aware that my nostrils were flaring. “I want to see Kate.”

He blinked at me. “You want to do
what
?”

“I want to see Kate. I want to make sure that you haven't hurt her.”

He swayed, and held on to the door to steady himself. “You want to fucking
what
?”

“I told you, Victor. I want to see Kate. If you've hurt her, I'm going to call the cops.”

Victor said, “I know all about you, Gideon.” He swayed, and then he wagged his finger at me. “I know your fucking game.”

“Whatever you know about me, I know a whole lot more about you. Now I want to see Kate.”

“You want to see Kate? You really want to see Kate? Well . . . you can't.”

“You want to bet? If you don't call her to the door right now, I'm going to force my way in there, I promise you.”

Victor shook his head, and gave me a stupid drunken grin. “She's not here, Gideon. That's why you can't see her.”

“I heard her.”

“No, you didn't, because she isn't here. Monica—come here and tell this clown that Kate isn't here.
Monica!
”

Monica appeared, looking as disheveled as Victor. She was wearing a tight red satin dress with a broken shoulder strap.

“Tell him,” said Victor. “Is Kate here, or not?”

“Not,” said Monica, making a grab for the nearest armchair to steady herself.

“So where is she?” I demanded. “If she's left you, I can't say that I blame her.”

Victor shook his head again, and carried on shaking it, as if he was deeply amused. “You want to see Kate. What a
putz
.”

“Okay, if she isn't here now, when is she coming back?”

“When is she coming
back
?”

“That's what I asked you.”

Victor said nothing, but hesitated for a moment and then closed the door in my face. I stood in the hallway for a while, wondering if I ought to try knocking again, but if he was telling me the truth, and Kate really wasn't there, what was the point? I would only antagonize him even more than I had already, and I knew what he and Jack Friendly were capable of doing to people who rubbed them the wrong way. Or even people who didn't.

I went back up to my apartment. As I opened the door, I saw the old guy in the pale gray smock standing deep in the shadows at the bottom of the stairs. I said, “Hi,” and lifted my hand to him in greeting, but I wasn't sure that he saw me, because he didn't acknowledge me at all, and immediately started to climb the stairs up toward Pearl's apartment.

I went back to my keyboard. I sat down and played the hurry a couple more times, but I couldn't make it snappy enough, and I decided to finish it in the morning. The past few weeks traveling around Europe with Kate had exhausted me. My mind was scattered all over the place, like a jigsaw that somebody has dropped on the floor, because everything that I had ever believed in had been proved to be false. I had believed that time was sequential, that one day followed another. I had believed that when people die, they're dead, and they can never reappear.

I went to bed and punched my pillow into shape, pretending it was Victor Solway's face. The moon was shining through my bedroom window again, a cold reminder that time was passing by. Kate had said that there were only three days left, and now there were only two. But two days until
what
? And where was Kate? If she hadn't gone back to Victor, where had she gone? And with whom? I was not only baffled, I was jealous, too. Maybe she had
another lover, apart from me. Maybe she had dozens of lovers. Maybe she was stringing us all along, with hallucinations and tricks and optical illusions. I felt as if everybody I met was wearing a mask, like the carnival masks of Venice, and that I was taking part in some mysterious dance whose steps and eventual purpose I couldn't even begin to understand.

* * *

The following morning was darker and colder than ever. Victor left the house at 9:15
AM
, followed about fifteen minutes later by Monica. As soon as I saw Monica climb into a taxi, I went cautiously downstairs and knocked. Maybe Kate
had
been there last night, but had been too intimidated by Victor to come out.

I knocked again, and called, “Kate? Are you in there?
Kate?
” but there was no reply.

I was about to go back upstairs when Malkin appeared at the end of the hallway, by the door that led to the yard in back. She mewed at me, and stood up on her hind legs, clawing at the door panels.

“Hey, kitty cat, do you want to go outside? You'll freeze your furry little ass off, I warn you.”

But Malkin mewed again, more impatiently this time, and I unbolted the door for her and turned the key. Outside, it was absolutely bitter, with a northwest wind blowing, and the sky was that weird orange color that warns of impending snow.

I expected Malkin to go running off to do her business, but she stopped and turned around and mewed again.

“What's the matter, puss? Go and do what you have to do, for Christ's sake, and then come back. It's too damned cold to hang around.”

But Malkin stayed where she was, mewing at me.

“What do you want? You no speak-a da English, you dumb cat? I know you can when you feel like it.”

She trotted off a little way, and then stopped again, as if she were waiting for me.

“Oh, I get it! You want me to follow you! Why the hell didn't you say so?”

I followed her round the back of the house, across the brick-paved yard. A crowd of sparrows were perched in the branches of a leafless apple tree, but when I came around the corner, they all burst into the air.

Malkin went to Victor's window, the one with the window box outside, and jumped up onto the ledge. She scratched at the glass, and mewed at me again.

“What? You want me to open the window for you? It's probably locked, and alarmed. Victor's going to think that I was trying to break in and steal his reproduction furniture. As if.”

But Malkin wouldn't let up. She kept on scratching and scrabbling at the window, her claws squeaking on the glass, and mewing at the same time.

I went closer to the window and when I looked inside, I could see that the catch wasn't properly fastened. If I rattled the window frame a few times, I could probably work it loose. I looked at Malkin and said, “You don't want me to open this window for you, do you? You want me to open this window for
me
.”

I thought: Maybe Kate
is
inside, after all. Maybe she's tied up, and gagged, but she sent Malkin to find me, so that I could rescue her. But almost immediately, I thought: that's insane. Why should Victor tie her up? And no cat is intelligent enough to find somebody and lead them anyplace, even Malkin.

All the same, I gripped the bottom edge of the window frame, and I shook it. I kept on shaking it and shaking it, and with every shake I could see the brass fastener edging its way out of its stay. After twenty or thirty shakes, the fastener popped out, and I was able to slide the window upward and open. I could see an alarm contact, but no alarm went off, so I guessed that Monica had forgotten to set it.

I wondered if Malkin had
known
that. And if she had, how?

I looked around the yard, and up at the windows of the houses on either side, to make sure that nobody was watching me. Then I climbed up onto the window box, and maneuvered myself inside. Once I was over the window ledge, I lost my balance and fell heavily onto the carpet, twisting my ankle, but I quickly picked myself up. Malkin jumped in after me.

I closed the window and locked it. It was very warm inside the apartment, and silent, except for the murmur of the traffic outside and the ticking of Victor's reproduction long-case clock.

“Okay, Malkin,” I told her. “Where's your mistress? Come on, kitty cat—show me.”

I went from room to room, opening every closet and looking behind every curtain. I knelt down and checked under Victor's bed, and under the guest beds, too. I looked in the bathroom. I opened the shower stall. But—nothing. Kate wasn't here.
Nobody
was here.

I went to Victor's mock antique desk, and opened all the drawers. In the right-hand bottom drawer I found a box of writing paper, with the letter-heading penumbra international property, 200 madison avenue. But Victor's name wasn't on it, and so it wasn't really prima facie evidence that he was Penumbra's owner. Upstairs, I had a whole stack of writing paper from the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Hollywood, but that didn't prove that I owned it.

I gave up. I couldn't work out why Malkin had encouraged me to break in here. There was nothing here to show that Kate was being battered or mistreated, and there was nothing to establish that Victor had anything to do with Penumbra.

Taking a last look around, though, I noticed again that there were dozens of photographs of Victor on the walls, but no photographs of Kate anywhere. And the usual touches that a woman would add to her apartment were remarkable by their absence. No fresh flowers, no fragrant bowls of potpourri, no
lace tablecloths on any of the side tables. There were only a few ornaments—one of them an ugly bronze statuette of a pit bull terrier—and none of those had been positioned with any sense of scale.

Maybe—just maybe—Victor had been telling me the truth. Maybe Kate
wasn't
here.

I went back to the master bedroom, with Malkin following close behind me. I opened up all of the closets again. Shirts, suits, pants, men's sweaters, pajamas. No women's clothes at all. I opened the drawers in the bureau. All Calvin Klein undershorts, and socks. No panties, and no bras.

I was mystified. It was obvious that Kate didn't live here anymore—and for that matter, neither did Victor's girlfriend Monica. Yet Kate had said that she couldn't leave Victor, even if she wanted to. He had a hold on her, and she couldn't break free—how many times had she told me that? Yet for some reason she must have been lying to me.

I left the apartment by the front door, giving it a sharp slam, just like Monica did, to make sure that it was properly closed. Just as I was slamming it, however, I heard footsteps outside, on the stoop, and the house door was suddenly unlocked. Jack Friendly walked in, wearing his dark glasses and his long black coat.

He looked at me, and then he looked at Victor's front door. He took off his sunglasses.

“Victor in?” he asked me. His eyes kept flicking from Victor's front door, and back to me.

“No—no, he isn't. I don't think so, anyhow. I just knocked, and there was no reply.”

“No hard feelings about Venice?” he said. He really looked conciliatory, not. His eyes were like two ball bearings.

I gingerly touched the bridge of my nose. “I kind of think you overreacted, Jack, to tell you the truth.”

Jack didn't blink. “I'm paid to overreact. That's my job.”

“Okay, if you say so. But next time I'd prefer it if you didn't overreact on my nose.”

He glanced toward Victor's front door again. “You haven't been
in
there, have you?” he asked me.

“
In
there? How would I get in there?”

“I don't know. But when I was coming up the steps, I could have sworn I heard this door shut.”

I shook my head. “Nah . . . I came down to see Victor, to say I was sorry for last night. He was making a noise and I complained about it. But—you know—everybody has a right to party, don't they?”

Jack took out a key and pushed it into Victor's door, although he didn't take his eyes off me once.

“Come on, puss,” I told Malkin. “Let's see if we can find you a can of anchovies.”

Jack froze, as if I had insulted him to his face.

“I was talking to the
cat
,” I explained, but when I looked down, there was no sign of Malkin anywhere. I saw a muscle working in Jack's left cheek. “She must have, like—run off,” I ended, lamely.