Authors: Peter Spiegelman
“I’m glad I had the cleaning lady in this week,” I said. She looked at me, but before she could speak, Mills kicked me in the head with a wet foot.
“Shut the fuck up, John.”
He made us lie on the floor in my bedroom while he rifled my closets. He put on a pair of corduroys and a button-down shirt. He was taller than me, and skinny, but they fit well enough. The shower and the fresh clothes made him look cleaner but not better. Staring out from his shaven face, his eyes looked somehow more crazy. He marched us out to the sofa and pushed us down on it again. He stood before us, tapping his bare foot.
“Cash,” he said. He looked at me, expectantly.
“There’s a hundred or so in my wallet, on the counter, and maybe three hundred in my top dresser drawer. If you want more than that, we need to go to a cash machine,” I said.
“I’m sure you’d love to make that trip, huh?” He looked at Jane. “What about you?” She turned toward him, but seemed to look right through him.
“There are two hundred dollars in my bag,” she said. Her voice was dead flat. He looked at her a while and nodded. He picked up her purse and looked through it. He pocketed the cash and put her cell phone on the counter. He looked at her driver’s license photo and back at Jane.
“It doesn’t do you justice,” he said. Shit. Then he went into the bedroom and came back quickly with a wad of cash.
“Six hundred twenty-seven dollars total. Not great, but a start,” he said. He looked at me. “Car keys.”
“I don’t own a car,” I said slowly. Mills’s pale face grew paler, and his wide, thin mouth twitched. He backhanded me with the gun. I saw it coming and flicked my head back, but not far enough. He caught me on the eyebrow. It started to bleed.
“You just keep fucking me up here, John. How can you not own a car? It’s not like you can’t afford to keep one. What are you, too fucking cheap?” He shook his head and said something to himself. He turned to Jane. “How about you?” She looked through him and shook her head. Mills looked at her, and for a moment I thought he was going to hit her too, and my whole body tensed. But he relaxed.
“Fuck it,” he said. “A car would’ve been nice, but it could’ve been a hassle too. What I’m thinking now is maybe a bus. What do you think, John? I take the PATH to Jersey City, hop on a Jersey Transit train to Trenton, connect over to the Philly commuter line, and catch a bus from Philly to Miami. And once I’m in Miami, John, I am gone, gone, gone.” He liked the story he was telling, and he liked telling it to us. He knew the implications, and knew that we did too. He smiled, and his eyes were shiny.
“So, good company, a good night’s sleep, and an early start in the morning. That sounds like a plan to me. But first, some dinner.” He went into the kitchen and started rummaging through the refrigerator and the cabinets. He muttered to himself about the pitiful state of my larder.
I looked at Jane and smiled what I hoped was a comforting smile. She stared back at me, uncomforted. Mills was crazy, and he was getting crazier by the minute, and we both knew it. He wasn’t pretending that we could walk away from this if we just cooperated; I wouldn’t have believed him if he had. He’d killed twice and liked it, and he was going to do it again. The only questions were when, and what would come first, and would he give me any opening at all.
He took his head out of the refrigerator suddenly, as if a thought had occurred to him, and he looked over at the paper bags near the front door. White cardboard containers had spilled out of them. One had burst open, and a pile of cold sesame noodles was growing colder on the wood floor. He walked over, knelt down, picked up a few noodles in his fingers, and ate them.
“Now, this is more like it. A little dusty, but definitely more like it,” he said, chuckling.
He sat at the kitchen counter, eating from the containers with the complimentary chopsticks. He ate quickly, but he was messy. He worked his way through the food in silence, staring at us—mostly at Jane—as he ate. He wiped his mouth and threw the napkin on the counter and sighed.
“That was good. A little cold, but excellent choices. My compliments.” He nodded to Jane. She was still and distant. “Now, shall we see what the future holds?” He broke open a fortune cookie and looked at the strip of paper inside and began laughing wildly. “Oh, this is priceless—really priceless,” he cackled. He held the fortune up. “You will receive an unexpected visit,” he read. His shoulders shook and his face reddened and little tears formed in his eyes. He was becoming hysterical, and he fought to control it. After a while he won. He took a deep breath and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Must be the MSG; goes right to my head.” He focused on us again, and then on Jane. She was motionless and far, far away. “Hey, pearl of the Orient, do you ever talk? I know you’re miffed because I fucked up your cozy little evening with John-boy. Well, your honey fucked me out of a few million dollars, so you tell me, who’s worse off? But hey, maybe later we can make it up to one another, huh?” Jane gave him no reaction. He picked the gun off the counter and started tossing it lightly from one hand to the other. He was working himself up to it now. He looked at me.
“You like the inscrutable types, John? Is she a change of pace after the late Mrs. March? Hope to change your luck by changing models, maybe?” Mills paused, and said in a stage whisper, “I got a newsflash for you, pal, it’s not working.” He laughed wildly at his joke, and his laughter threatened to go over the edge again, but he pulled it back. Shit.
“It’s a pity Bernie can’t join us tonight. I know he would’ve loved this. And you made a real impression on him, John. I mean, he had a serious hard-on for you, and it just got worse when he read all that stuff about you. And of course, he always loved the ladies.” He looked at Jane, but she gave him nothing. He moved closer to her.
“And speaking of ladies, I saw the lovely and talented Helene Pierro come in and out of here this afternoon. First time I’ve seen her with clothes on; almost didn’t recognize her. Frankly, I like her better without. Very limber, and such a nice way with the language. I guess Bernie was right after all, about you working for Pierro.” He stood in front of Jane and put his hand on her shoulder, and my stomach lurched. Jane was perfectly still, her gaze beyond the horizon. He was getting to it now.
“Poor Bernie. I’ll miss him in a way. He wasn’t dumb, just a little crass. But he was inventive. And let me tell you, he could’ve had quite a career in adult entertainment. Did you ever get to see his work, John? Maybe with Jane’s help I could re-create some of his more memorable moments. For your viewing pleasure, and as a sort of memorial to Bernie. I know . . .”
I didn’t see it coming, and neither did Mills. Jane was fast. Her square boot heels hammered his bare feet like pile drivers, and while the scream was still forming in his throat, she twisted back and kicked up at his crotch. The angle wasn’t great and the sofa slid, and she caught him high, just at the beltline. Mills staggered backward, his feet bloody. He brought the gun up, and I launched myself low off the sofa. I caught him in the knees and he fell back against the kitchen counter and bounced off and scrabbled out from under me. Jane did some scissor thing with her legs and flipped herself off the sofa, coming up lightly on two feet.
Mills was screaming and scrambling to his feet. He squeezed off a shot and something hot roared past my ear and whanged into an iron column behind me. I got my legs under me, and to my right I saw Jane square herself, take a half step, and launch a kick. Mills raised the gun, and I drove up and forward with everything I had and he fired. I buried my head in his sternum and felt the breath leave him and felt his feet come off the ground and I kept going—forward, forward, until I heard glass shattering, heard Mills cry out, and felt the cold night air on my face.
I leaned on my shoulder against the empty window frame. Below me, the street was still, a tableau of frozen traffic, upturned faces, and the body of Evan Mills, broken in a sea of broken glass. The only movement was the tattered window shade, brushing against my face; the only sound I heard was my own gasping. I eased myself carefully back inside.
I remember trying to think of something clever to say, something understated and ironic. Maybe something about first dates or lousy houseguests, I don’t know. I remember turning around. And then I saw her there, on her back, her hands still bound, one leg out, the other bent beneath her, her head resting at an odd angle in a spray of blood.
Chapter Thirty
They kept me overnight, for observation, they said. They inventoried the new damage and declared me lucky—cuts, abrasions, and bruises only. Nothing broken, nothing shot. I was the lucky one. But I was still getting over a head injury, and someone thought I was displaying a strange lack of affect, and they had the beds available, so what the hell?
From time to time there were a lot of people in my hospital room, but I don’t remember much of what they said. The Manhattan cops came first, and then the feds; the Queens cops were close behind. Fred Pell was there; Shelly DiPaolo sent Conaway in her stead. Mike stood in the doorway while they asked questions and I gave answers, and when I got tired of repeating myself, he made them leave. They seemed satisfied, he said. I didn’t care if they were or not. When the cops were gone, the nurse gave me something for pain. It worked well, but left me feeling like my brain was hovering high above the rest of me.
After that, Tom Neary stopped by, and so did my brother Ned and both my sisters. Even though I was the lucky one, they all seemed very grave. Maybe it was just me; maybe it was the drugs. They came and spoke and left quickly, until only Mike remained. I was getting tired.
“Where is she?” I asked. He told me. I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, the room was mostly dark and Mike was gone. I looked at the clock. It was past midnight, and quiet. I heard voices speaking far away, I heard the distant whoosh of traffic, and I heard my own breathing, still slow and regular from sleep. Beyond my small table lamp, the only light came from the blue glow of a television, playing to an empty bed across the hall.
I hauled myself up to a sitting position. The world stayed on its axis and my brain was back home in my skull. I lowered the railing and swung my legs over and stood. The floor was cold, and I felt a draft creep in behind me. I stepped into the hallway. It was empty and dark. The nurses’ station was a long way off and lit up like a cruise ship on a nighttime sea. I walked quietly across the hall and down two doors. The door to room 420 was open. It was a double room, but there was no other occupant than Jane, asleep like a child atop the high bed.
They’d told me she would be fine. Yes, it looked bad; head wounds often do, they’d said. But this was a graze and a mild concussion and nothing more. Not even a scar would remain. She’d be out in two days’ time. She would be fine, they’d promised, and though I believed them, I needed to see. I walked slowly to her bed.
She was on her side, turned toward me, and in repose her face looked very young and impossibly beautiful. Her cropped black hair was like ink on the pillow, and in the glow of a nightlight I could see the bandage on the side of her head and the bruising around it like a shadow. Even amid the hospital odors, I caught a hint of her perfume.
There was a chair against the wall that was light enough for me to lift without screaming. I carried it to the bed and sat. When I looked up, Jane was looking back at me. She smiled a tired, sort of goofy smile and murmured something I couldn’t make out. I leaned in closer.
“Stay,” she whispered. Then she reached a small hand out from under her blanket and took hold of mine and closed her dark eyes and slept. I put my head back and shut my eyes too, and it was well after dawn when human voices woke us.
Acknowledgments
Thanks are due many people for their support while I was writing this book. To my early readers, Nina Spiegelman, Barbara Wang, and John Spiegelman, for their advice and awesome tolerance for pestering. To Joe Toto, for his tour of the old neighborhood. To the first pros that read this, Rod Huntress, Chris Niles, and Susan Schwartz, for the kind of feedback that can only come from people unrelated to the author by blood or marriage. To my agent, Denise Marcil, and her team at The Marcil Agency, for all of their efforts on my behalf. To Sonny Mehta, at Knopf, for making the editorial process so thoroughly entertaining. And to Alice Wang, for more than I can possibly say.
Chapter 1 from
DEATH’S LITTLE HELPERS
“As a husband, he was a lying, selfish prick,” Nina Sachs said, and lit yet another cigarette. Her silver lighter caught the late-April sun as it came through the big windows. She flicked a strand of auburn hair away from her face and blew a plume of smoke at the high ceiling. “And as a father, he’s no better. But he’s our meal ticket, Billy’s and mine, and if something’s happened to him—if the cash is going to stop—I want to know about it sooner, not later.”
Nina Sachs was a few inches over five feet tall, and wiry. Her short straight hair was pulled into a blunt ponytail, away from a pale elfin face that was full of motion. Grins and frowns and ironic twists flickered by, and I saw a lot of her teeth, which were uneven but not unattractive. Her hands were quick and so were her hazel eyes. Nina Sachs was close to forty, but despite the chain-smoking she looked ten years younger.
“What makes you think something’s happened to him?” I asked.
She crossed her legs and uncrossed them and regarded her small bare feet and her toenails, which were painted apple green. She crossed her legs once more and finally tucked them beneath her. She fiddled with one of her silver earrings and picked with a thumbnail at a fleck of paint on her black yoga pants. She took another hit off the Benson & Hedges.