Man About Town: A Novel (40 page)

What had he been spared for?

Kristen was right: Mullan called a few days later. “Joel, how’re you doing?”

“Okay.”

Mullan waited a beat or two for Joel to ask how he was doing. Joel did not. “Listen, the senator has some interest in the Harris amendment.”

“Does he?” Joel said, innocently. As if innocence would prevent him from doing whatever Mullan asked.

“Yeah, but we’ve got this scoring problem. Here’s the deal: the budget people agreed that there would be this, whatever, deterrent effect. People would stop doing unsafe stuff.”

“The budget office bought that?”

“Uh-huh.” Even Mullan chuckled at this absurdity. “So they’re ready to score some savings. Except only way in the future.”

“How far?”

“Seven years. See, they say somebody who did something unsafe now might not get sick for five or six years. And then it would be a couple more years before they got Medicare. So they show the savings starting seven years from now; if people start acting safer right away, we’ll save some money seven years from now.”

“Ah.” Joel’s message light flashed on. Shoot, it was eleven o’clock, Michael was supposed to call from work. “Well, that kind of makes sense. That it would take some time.”

“But seven years is outside the window. You know that.”

“Right,” Joel said. “The window.” Congress dealt with the future in five-year chunks. If you did something that saved money in Year Five you could spend all the money in Year One or Year Two. If you did something that didn’t save money until Year Six or Year Seven, you were outside the window: you had nothing to spend.

Mullan went on. “So if we don’t save anything in the first five years, there’s no point in doing it.”

What a shame. “I guess not,” Joel said.

“We gotta move it up somehow.”

“How?”

“That’s what I was hoping you’d tell me.”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, I hope you come up with something. We’re having this meeting Wednesday.”

“Wednesday?” Joel said. “Let me see if I’m free.”

“With the senator.”

“Oh. I’m free.”

There were two messages, the first from Michael, the second from Bate. Of course he should return Michael’s call first, so they could make plans for the evening.

“I’ve found him,” Bate said.

“Jesus, where?”

“Mr. Lingeman, you have a balance due.”

“Of course, sure, I’ll get that off to you, whatever it is. But tell me, where—”

“Mr. Lingeman, I would prefer to tell you face to face. And I’m afraid I must ask, would you mind very much bringing a certified check?” As if he were a kidnapper, holding Petras Baranauskas for ransom.

The ransom was nearly eight thousand dollars. Joel had to close a CD prematurely. The woman at the bank mournfully recounted all the penalties that would stem from Joel’s profligacy and impatience. “I’m sorry,” he said, as if he had to apologize for withdrawing his own money. “I really need to get this today.” She shook her head. Possibly she pictured a Mafia loan shark waiting for him in the alley.

He hesitated before knocking on Bate’s door. He imagined for a moment that Petras Baranauskas would be there, that Bate was actually holding him there, ready to produce him as soon as Joel came with the money. Which wouldn’t, really, have been so awfully much to expect for eight thousand dollars.

Bate opened the door before Joel could knock. He was startled; he must have been headed out somewhere. He had a raincoat on, though it was a warm, clear day—not a snappy private-eye trench coat, just a drab black raincoat such as a flasher might have worn. “Oh, Mr. Lingeman. I didn’t expect
you quite this soon, I was on my way to lunch. I … would you care to join me?”

Joel considered this for a moment. He was always happy to eat, and he would have liked to learn something about Bate, who was more a mystery than a solver of mysteries. But he expected Bate would reveal nothing—the man barely revealed information he had been paid to obtain—and that instead the conversation would turn to Joel: Joel’s motives, Joel’s plans. Bate would sit in his black raincoat, ignoring his little salad, and watch as Joel, mouth full, tried to explain what he could not explain to himself.

“I’m sorry,” Joel said. “I hate to hold up your lunch, but I need to get back to the Hill.”

“Certainly.” Bate stepped aside to admit Joel, closed the door, sat behind his desk, still in his raincoat.

“I brought the check.”

“Thank you.”

Joel held out the envelope. Bate nodded toward a corner of the desk. Joel put the envelope there and said, “So where is he?”

“Just one minute, if you please, Mr. Lingeman. I have a document I must ask you to sign.” He pulled a sheet from the typewriter—two sheets, rather, with the world’s last piece of carbon paper between them. “This merely certifies that you engaged me to locate an individual, that you did not disclose to me the nature of your business with that individual, and that you have no intention of using any information I supply for the purpose of committing any—”

“A release? You want me to sign a release?”

“It seems prudent.”

“Okay.” Joel signed on the line next, to his name, halfway down. Bate signed, filling the remainder of the page.

“Thank you,” Bate said. “Roseville, New Jersey.”

“What?”

“1693 Bridge Street, Roseville, New Jersey.”

“You’re kidding.”

“He went away. He came back.”

“So you didn’t have to hunt very hard,” Joel said, eyeing the envelope with the check in it.

“I’ll describe my activities in my report. I’m sorry I haven’t prepared it yet. As I said, I didn’t expect you quite so …”

He lived in Roseville, New Jersey. Joel formed a silly picture of flowering vines trailing over one of the abandoned satanic mills that you saw from the train, pretty much all he had ever seen of New Jersey. That and, “Trenton Makes, the World Takes.”

He lived. “You’re sure it’s the same guy?”

“I completed a visual identification.”

“You … you mean, you went to Roseville?” Joel hadn’t been sure the man even went outdoors. “Did you talk to him?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t, personally, have anything to say to him. I was able to take a photograph. Would you like to see?”

Bate reached into his desk drawer and extracted a manila folder. Before he could open it, Joel said, “No. Not right now.”

“Very well. I’ll be furnishing you a number of other exhibits. I have a credit report, a Social Security earnings history, and—”

“You’re not supposed to be able to’ get that.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“His Social Security record, no one’s supposed to give you that. I mean, it’s kind of an invasion.”

Bate stared at him a minute.

Joel said, “Well, uh, that’s it, I guess. You’ll be sending me this report.”

“Yes. I’ll get to it right after lunch. I’ll mail it to you or … I suppose I could messenger it, but—”

“That would be extra.”

“Yes. These other materials, you might want to look through those now.”

“No.”

“They’re really most informative. The earnings history, for
example: you can actually track all the gainful employment he’s had since—”

“I don’t want to know any of it,” Joel said. He didn’t care what dreary jobs Petras Baranauskas had drifted through after his one-shot modeling career. He didn’t care if Petras paid his credit card balances in thirty days or sixty days or never. “I don’t want any of it. Not right now.”

“Not even the picture?”

“Least of all the picture.” Of course part of him ached to see the picture, was ready to tear the folder from Bate’s hands. But it was only a picture. Even if he had just paid more for it than he would have had to spend for a painting in one of those pricey Georgetown galleries, it merely referred, as all the other documents in the folder merely referred, attested.

“I suppose you mean to see him for yourself,” Bate said.

“I guess I will.”

“He … he isn’t what you’ve been picturing.” Bate inched the folder toward Joel, tempting him.

“I’m not sure what I’ve been picturing. I don’t think I’ve been picturing anything.”

“I mean he’s’ nothing like the young man in the advertisement.”

“How could he be? But enough that you’re sure about him.”

“Yes.”

“How do you get to Roseville? Will I have to drive?”

“Oh, no, I never drive. You take the Amtrak to Newark, then a commuter train, the …” Bate peeked in the folder. “The New Jersey Transit Kilmer line.”

“Fine.” Joel stood up. “Look, don’t even bother about the report. And you can, I don’t know, send that other stuff. Whenever.”

“I always write a report.”

“All right.”

“Did you want the other picture back?”

“What?”

“The advertisement you brought me, did you want it back?”

“Oh,” Joel said. “Yeah, I guess.”

Bate handed it over; Joel looked at it. He was stunned, as startled by the boy’s beauty as if he had never seen the picture before. Well, he hadn’t seen it in a couple of months: he would have thought his mental facsimile of it was faithful enough, but he must have got it mixed up somehow with the glossy Peter Barry in Chambers Sexton’s binder. The boy in the picture was entirely different, rougher and at the same time more innocent. Maybe he had only existed that one instant, just long enough for a shutter to open and close.

“Mr. Lmgeman.” Bate stood up, in his black raincoat. Joel thought he meant to shake hands, extended his own. “No,” Bate said. “I have to tell you … I’ve helped you with this, but … Mr. Lingeman, you have no right.”

“No right to …”

“To just go there and—this man who doesn’t even know who you are.”

“I’m not going to do anything to him. I’m not sure I’m even going to talk to him.”

“I’ve found a lot of people. People who didn’t want to be found. That’s what I do. But they—they knew they were missing. They’d walked out on somebody, or they’d stolen something, or … They knew there was someone looking for them.”

“So … what? You’re afraid I’m going to upset him?”

“He’s lived his whole life not even aware of your existence, his whole life.”

Joel shrugged. There were about six billion people of whom that could be said.

“For you to come to him now. Tell him that all these years you’ve been …” Bate was too fastidious to finish. All these years you’ve been looking at his picture and jerking off. That’s what Bate thought. And that Petras Baranauskas would be disgusted, feel sullied at the very idea that someone had thought of him that way, used him that way, for so many years.

“I haven’t—” Joel began. He hadn’t, as it happened. When he had first possessed the picture, so long ago, he had not yet discovered the art of self-abuse. By the time he had come into possession of it again, the few weeks he had it before he turned it over to Bate, he had a drawer full of more explicit meditational aids. He didn’t need to tell all this to Bate; there would be no use explaining to Bate that his feeling for the boy wasn’t crudely sexual. If in fact it wasn’t.

Bate shook his head. “It’s like telling him he’s never been anything but the boy in that picture. It’s like saying he had no life.”

“No, of course he did, I’m not…” Seconds, Petras had stood in front of a camera for seconds, and then had gone on to rack up a Social Security earnings history, a credit history, a lot of others Bate had not unearthed. Medical history, driving record, maybe an arrest or two. Maybe his name on the plaque for a winning team in the Roseville bowling league, or on the shelf that held his personal beer stein at the Roseville bar, or—so much Bate had not uncovered, so many folders he could have filled. Just one of which might have contained the single line: “10/8/63. CL: Simms of Santa Fe. AG: Dink & Dink. PH: A. Mar key.” The moment Joel thought of as the climax of Petras’s life. The shutter opening and closing: Petras might not remember at all. Maybe he didn’t even remember posing for that picture.

“I’m the one who had no life,” Joel said.

“Oh, come, Mr. Lingeman. You’ve had a successful career, excellent academic record, you’ve …” He trailed off, having disclosed that he—and why not?—had checked Joel out. Another folder. Maybe he had six billion folders.

“I’m going to be tied up on Thursday,” Joel said.

“Oh, yeah?” Michael put his fork down, waited for Joel to elaborate.

They’d been together almost every night. Possibly they had
reached the point at which it was no longer sufficient for Joel to say he was going to be tied up. “I’m going to New York. Just for the one night.”

“New York? You just went.”

Joel couldn’t recall having told Michael this. “Yeah, but that was business. This time it’s just—you know, every so often I go to New York because it’s New York. I go to museums or maybe a show, whatever. I’ve always gone a couple times a year.”

“Oh. But you don’t want me to come.”

“I—”

“Well, I guess I can’t really afford it.”

Michael went on eating, as if the topic were closed. Which was good, because of course Joel had no intention of bringing him along on this particular trip. But the topic was by no means closed. Michael must have been thinking: I’m supposed to sit alone in my little studio on T Street while my rich lover gallivants off to New York? While Joel was thinking: am I supposed to take him on trips, as if I were his sugar daddy? Or am I supposed to stay here and do only those things Michael can afford? Which didn’t, so far, include paying for dinner even once.

“Where are you going to be staying?” Michael said.

“In the Village, place called the Sheridan Square Hotel.”

“Is that nice?”

“It’s a dump. But, you know, it’s cheap, I don’t care much about hotel rooms.”

“Oh. I guess, if you were—I mean, if you’re going anyway, then it doesn’t matter much if there’s one or two people in the room.”

Uh-oh. “I don’t guess.”

“And then there’d only be the train fare. How much is that?”

“Well, I take the Metroliner. It’s, I don’t know, two hundred and something round trip.” That would surely end the matter.

“Oh. But they have cheaper trains, too, right?”

“Yeah. Maybe half that.”