Kissing the Beehive (19 page)

The woman called back and said I was to be at the booth again the next day, same time. When I got there it was empty and the phone was ringing. I

snatched it up. The woman said only, "Subway station, Seventy-second Street and Central Park West in half an hour."

Once there, I didn't know if I should wait outside or go in. I went in, paid my fare and sat down on a bench. Several trains came and went. I was looking the other way when he sat down next to me.

"Ask away."

He was in his fifties. Short-cropped black hair, a face that could be described only as soft and pleasant. There was a slight sheen to it, as if he was sweating or had just applied cream.

I didn't know whether to shake his hand, but since he didn't offer, I didn't try. But I couldn't resist _looking_ at his hands. He was the first murderer I'd ever met and I wanted to remember as much as I could. Fat hands.

Pudgy fat hands.

"Mr. Erskine?"

"Mr. Bayer?" He smiled and winked.

"My friend told me you know something about the death of Gordon Cadmus."

"I do. I had a ringside seat. Do you mind?" He reached over and tore open my shirt. I was so shocked I didn't move. He pulled so hard that two buttons flew off and rolled down the platform. His face was impassive. Leaning over, he looked down the open shirt.

"Gotta be careful. Don't want you wired or anything. So, okay: Gordon Cadmus. Whaddya want to know?"

"You were involved?"

"Yep. I was the second coat from the left." He cracked up and laughed so hard that tears filled his eyes. Then he repeated the line as if it was too good to lose. When he was done, he sighed.

"You're not even gonna ask why I'm talkin' to you?"

"Well yes."

"Because I need the money. Don't we all? Your girlfriend paid me half up
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front and the other half after we talk."

"She gave you money?"

"Hell yes! Twenty-five hundred now, twenty-five hundred after."

"Jesus! Five thousand dollars?"

"You didn't know? Nice girlfriend you got. So yeah, I was there."

"Who ordered it?"

He looked at the ceiling. The thunder of an approaching train got louder. "If I said the name it wouldn't ring a bell."

"Say it anyway."

"Herman Ranftl. But the rumor was the order came from the mysterious East, you know what I mean? Ranftl just set it up for some warlord or something in Burma.

Cadmus and those other guys were messing around with smack importers. I guess they stuck their hands too far into the cookie jar. Fortune cookies!" He laughed again, delighted with his own wit.

"What happened to the other man you were with?"

"He got colon cancer. Nice way to go, huh? First they give you a bag for your shit, then you're in a bag and all you _are_ is shit.

"You know your girlfriend? How the hell'd she find me? I mean, it's not easy, you know? She just waltzed in and said, hey, can we talk? Very gutsy. I

like that in a woman."

Cass had given me Ivan's number weeks before. I called and asked how good a hacker he was.

He said the best. I asked him to find out whatever he could about Herman Ranftl and Bradley Erskine. I gave him all the details I

had but insisted he not tell Cass anything. Good man that he was, he didn't ask any questions other than what was relevant to his search.

I went back to Crane's View to talk with Mrs. Ostrova again and to read some pertinent police transcripts at the station. I called Frannie to say I was coming. He wasn't in when I arrived, but he had left a note on the front door telling me to keep dinner free. He had a video of the new _Wallace and Gromit_ film (an addiction we shared) and it was time to eat some steaks together.

The phone in the car rang as I was driving down Main Street. It was Edward Durant. He was entering the hospital for a few days and wanted me to have his telephone number there just in case. He asked if there were any new developments. Instead of answering, I asked if he'd ever heard of a man named

Herman Ranftl.

"Sure I knew Herman. He was a big _Macher_ for years. Used to go to Giants games with Albert Anastasia. Ranftl ordered the deaths ot Gordon Cadmus and the other two. Died in his sleep a few years ago in Palm Springs. A happy old man."

"What about Bradley Erskine?"

"Erskine? But Sam, I _told_ all this to your friend when she came to visit. She took copious notes. I assumed she gave them to you. No? What a charming woman. And certainly a fan of yours!"

'_'Veronica_ came to your house? _You_ told her about Ranftl and Erskine? When was this?"

"A week ago. More. Maybe ten days."

Sirens were wailing somewhere nearby but I barely noticed them after what Durant said. I wished him well in the hospital and got off the phone as fast as I could.

For a time I forgot where I was going. Why hadn't Veronica told me she'd spoken with Durant?

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Why had she lied about finding Erskine through her own research when she must have known he'd tell me? The only reason I could think of was so she could find out everything possible about the men and then hand it to me as a gift. Why did she continue to interfere with my work?

The night we spent together after I'd found her in the backyard had been okay, but more careful than anything else. We touched tentatively and with too much hesitation. I hadn't seen her since but we spoke on the phone a few times.

Warily.

I came out of my fog when an ambulance swerved around my car and roared on to the end of the block. Two police cars were stuck precariously in the middle of the street, doors still open.

Crime scene in Crane's View! Had someone snitched a magazine from the stationery store? A jaywalker caught red-handed crossing against the light?

As the ambulance pulled to a stop, I slowed and saw McCabe's silver Infiniti. It had gone up over the curb and was now blocking the sidewalk. What was going on?

I parked as close to the scene as I could. A crowd of people was standing around about ten feet from the action. I walked up and saw Donna, the waitress from Scrappy's Diner. She was going up and down on her toes, trying to get a better look. Both hands were over her mouth and her cheeks were wet.

"Donna, what's going on?"

"My uncle Frannie's been shot! Somebody shot him in his car."

I pushed through the crowd and up to the scene. McCabe was lying on his back on the pavement, a big pool of glistening blood off to his right side.

Paramedics were working on him. Two policemen talked to people who'd apparently seen what had happened.

Frannie's eyes were closed. When he opened them they were glazed and empty. Fish eyes. At that moment I thought he was going to die. The medics did what they could and then ran for a stretcher. Once he was secured, they snapped it open and had him inside the ambulance in seconds. The doors slammed and they were gone. I ran back to my car and followed them to the town hospital.

The waiting room was empty. I sat and prayed for him. After I explained to a nurse who I was, she said they had to operate at once. McCabe was unconscious. The wound was grave. They had no idea who'd done it.

Half an hour later Magda Ostrova came in looking bewildered. She'd been at the market. She'd just heard. Without another word she came over and we embraced. Sitting next to each other in that hospital silence, she squeezed my hand until it hurt.

Hours went by. People came and went. Other cops, many friends. The surgery continued.

Magda began to talk about Frannie. What a good man he was.

How he'd been like a father to her daughter, who'd been named after Pauline.

How he'd been the man in the Ostrova family after Magda divorced and her father died. She snarled about Frannie's ex-wife and how her career in television had been made when he thought up _Man Overboard_. That's right.

That ridiculous and successful half hour a week was _McCabe's_ idea! His wife took all the credit for it, but his snappy suits and other expensive goodies had come from a percentage of the show. No wonder he had spent so much time in

Los Angeles.

As tactfully as I could, I asked Magda if she and Frannie were together.

She laughed and said, "For a month, years ago. It wasn't good to be involved with him in _that_

way.

"What's strange about Frannie is when you're lovers with him, he treats you like dirt. When you're not, he's the greatest guy in the world."

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The surgery was successful but we were not allowed to see him for two days. When I entered his room, his eyes rolled over to me, then back up to the ceiling. I asked how he was and he nodded. I knew they were going to have to operate again. He gestured for me to come over and sit on the side of his bed.

He took my hand and held it but didn't speak. We sat there and looked out the window. A couple of times he sighed but nothing else.

"Do you know who did it?"

He shook his head.

"Maybe it was Mr. Litchfield getting back at you after all these years for burning his car."

He didn't smile. I asked if he wanted me to go. In a very quiet, un-McCabe voice, he said yes.

It turned out to be the week of the hospital. There was a message on my answering machine to call Edward Durant at the hospital in New York. When we spoke, he sounded as quiet and stricken as McCabe. He asked if it would be possible for me to come and see him soon.

He looked much worse than Frannie. I didn't ask what they were doing to him, but there were IVs and electrodes and whatever else they stick into a body when things aren't going well inside.

Strangely, he also gestured for me to come and sit next to him on the bed. His lion's voice had disappeared. His sentences frequently stopped midway whenever he ran out of energy.

He had thought he had more time left, but after this examination they weren't hopeful. His once-strong body had been overthrown by a mob of lunatic cells. The situation reminded him of looters in a riot. Running into a store, they take anything they can grab. Anything, so long as it isn't theirs.

There was no self-pity in Durant's voice, only a kind of disgusted wonder. Most of the time he spoke about his son. What was most wrenching to hear was his referring to him in the present tense.

At first I thought he was only reminiscing, but then he got to the point. Out of nowhere, he said he guessed I didn't make that much for a book.

I told him it was sufficient. He said he had a great deal of money left.

Originally he had planned to leave it all to Swarthmore College with the stipulation they create a scholarship program in his son's name, preferably in the English department.

He wanted to know if I would consider expanding my book so that it included the life of Edward Jr. I said that was no problem -- Pauline's husband had to play a very large role in the story.

That wasn't what he meant. "Don't you see, Sam, the only possible thing I can still do for Edward is vindicate him. I know it sounds crass, but I'd willingly give you any amount of money to do that so people could know what he was really like. Whatever you need that I have -- money, connections . . .

anything. I offer to you. My greatest wish is that a real writer tell not only the true story of Pauline's death, but Edward's as well. I know it would mean a longer book, but in the end wouldn't it be a better one? You'd have not only the story of a murder, but the love story of two extraordinary people."

I knew with his help I would have access to materials normally impossible to obtain. Yet I didn't want to commit myself. I told him to let me think about it and get back to him. He started to speak but stopped.

"What were you going to say?"

His lips trembled and he turned quickly away. He said something I couldn't hear.

"I'm sorry, Edward, I didn't hear you."

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He turned back. "Who will remember him when I'm dead? Who will remember the little boy spelling _d-o-g_? Or how he tried to hypnotize his shoelaces into tying themselves? Sam, _someone_ has to tell his story. Not just clear his name." He grabbed the bedsheet. "Life is not fair, but it can be just.

That's all I want. Help it to be just for my son."

It was raining when I left the hospital. One of those cold unpleasant rains that knows how to sneak down the back of your shirt and give you a chill before you've gone ten blocks. Hospitals invariably give me the feeling of being coated in an invisible sheen of bloodthirsty germs and lost hope that doesn't disappear until I've walked hard awhile and breathed in the healthy world outside, so I kept walking.

I wanted a hamburger. A cheeseburger dripping with grease and a mound of fried onion rings that would clog my arteries and fuck the rest. I knew a nice gross luncheonette nearby that had what I needed. I headed in that direction.

Standing on a corner waiting for the light to change, I looked across the street and saw Veronica.

My guts did a double salto. I didn't know whether to run away or straight at her.

"Hey, you wanna buy a gold chain?"

A tall black man standing next to me held open a case full of glittering junk.

"No thanks."

When I looked back across the street, Veronica had metamorphosed into just another lovely New York blond. The light changed and we moved toward each other. Without realizing it, I continued to stare at false Veronica. Seeing me gawk, her face turned to stone.

Later over my cheeseburger, I thought about what it was like to be haunted by a person. What was it like for Edward Durant to think about his son, falsely accused, imprisoned for murder, sexually assaulted, a suicide.

What was it like to be lying in a hospital bed knowing time was up? Your soul full of regrets and memories driving the guilt deeper every day.

I put the burger down and asked the counterman for a glass of water. I drank it in one go and asked for another, which went down the same way.

Holding the empty glass in my hand, I felt the world around me _increase_. Sounds, smells, the closeness of the people in the room. Some godly hand had turned up the volume. I knew if I went back outside I would be crushed by the weight. Is that what Durant was feeling? Because for him it could only get worse. Even frozen solid in this jacked-up moment, I knew it would pass and I would come through. Drink a glass of water, take a deep breath, rearrange the furniture . . . There were a million ways to fix things and go on. But what if all the furniture was gone and the only company you had in that final room were ghosts you'd spawned and fed on a lifetime of mistakes?