Payback (19 page)

And then on the other hand, knowing what he looked like was absolutely useless. The point was to figure out where the hell he'd gone.

Because Mack was there with him.

Mack and a dealer.

Ortega said, “… a dealer.” Ortega said, “
Why
…? Because he's got it in the house.”

Well … there was nothing in the house except hash—a little cannabis perfectus in the laundry bag. So? He could put it all together now and tie it up anyway.

Back in the living room. Sitting in the brown leather Barcelona chair again and staring at the air. The room wasn't bad. You want to guess whose it was, you'd say … what …? Maybe a stockbroker. A guy that doesn't know what he likes but he knows what's art: a lot of blobs against the walls.… A lot of Home Entertainment, everything top of the line.… We've got a Chang Tung water pipe.… We've got an answering machine here that doesn't have an answer, all the messages erased.

He looked at the machine. Turned it, for the hell of it, to OUTGOING/TEST and then leaned back and listened:

“This is a machine, you want to say something, say it.”
Beep
.

That was it. A hardball smartass American voice. “You want to say something, say it.” He'd heard it from the phone booth, he'd wanted to say to it, “Sport …? Fuck off.” It was that kind of voice. The winning personality of Jackie Lieber. Or anyway, Lieber was the name on the mailbox.
Apt
. #7:
Lieber, J
. Lieber meant lover so it could have been his name or it could have been his dream.

And it kept adding up.

Mitchell lit a cigarette and reached for the ashtray with the three other butts. Two Gauloise and a Chesterfield Light. Picturing the packages of Chesterfield Lights in the wastepaper basket. Mack's; at the Wien. Mack in the armchair and Jackie on the couch. Mack going, Hey, ole buddy—think he'll pay the two million? And Jackie says … what? Sink peppy, Jackie says.

Ole buddy, ole pal. Ole partner in conspiracy. That's the way it went then. Jackie gets the chemicals and Mack does the job. Jackie gets the bank account and Mack does the numbers. Slips the ole terminal Mickeys in the soup. The ole overalls in the ole chowder. Starts in Los Angeles and flies to New York.…

He thought it and he had to get up again and move, just the way he had to the first time he thought it. Not that it didn't sit right. He believed it and hated it at the same time.

Hated
it.

Not Mack, just It; the whole fucking thing. He wanted to kick it in its mean dirty teeth.

He paced to the window now and pulled back the draperies and squinted at the snow. His old cold friend. It used to wash things clean. He used to think of snow as not a thing, but a grace—an act of absolution for the whole filthy world. The baptismal water made tangible and cool and miraculously swift. Well, that was then. The old Snows of Yesteryear and nothing for today.

He went over to the ashtray and stubbed his cigarette. It was three in the morning. He had to make a plan and then move; do it fast. He could think about it later.

Or …?

Okay, he could think about it now. Rule #5 had been, Know what you're doing even when it's stupid. Well … he was adequate to Rule #5. He was doing something recklessly stupid and he knew it. Withholding evidence in a capital crime, for one thing. Going out on a high-wire without a net, for another.

But then if he wanted to get into all that, he'd be getting into sludge. That, or a Vienna roadshow of
Hamlet
, so he might as well forget it.

Because he was doing it anyway. Because he didn't have a choice. Because he wanted to see Mack. Because he needed to see Mack. Because he didn't want to run. Not yet, not now.

So it came down to method. A quick good plan. He could ask himself, to start, Do you trust Little Eva? He could tell himself, No, he wouldn't trust her with a grilled-cheese sandwich, but yeah, he was figuring she'd handed him the truth.

Or …?

Okay. Or. She was wrong.

Shit. You could think about that one for a while, stick your thumb in your mouth and go fetal on the floor.

So he had to assume it was one or the other. Paris or St. Moritz.

And he'd better luck out and pick the right place first because the deadline was Saturday—two-and-a-half days. It occurred to him—late, on the plane to Vienna—if they couldn't get the sweetener they could poison something else. One of the medicines. Any one of three dozen over-the-counter drugs. And the only way to stop it was to stop all sales and then stop all production …

Or …?

Stop Mack.

He went back to the window now and stared at the white sky that looked almost luminescent, like a backlit scene.

Paris, he was thinking. He could picture it too. Mack in some room. Or maybe he was picturing Mack in Saigon in that wine-colored robe with the girl kneading opium.

Think
.

What the hell do you think I'm doing here, Dumbo?

Guessing, You're just guessing. You make the wrong guess, you'll really blow the thing. Think. Something's there.

Nothing. Then a blur. It got up on its motorcycle and raced out of his mind. Too rapidly to catch.

Something you saw.

He'd seen nothing. He was staring at the snow.

Try Rule #6.—You remember Rule #6?

He was staring at the snow. Rule #6 was something about looking … seeing.… See the forest.… See the trees.…

Not yet, but keep going.

Rule #6: Look very carefully at what you don't see.… He was looking at the snow. In the light of the street lamp it looked like a terminal pillow fight.

So?

And then he suddenly remembered. It wasn't something he'd
seen
here, it was something he hadn't.

He went back to the bedroom and opened the closet.

Jackie, the Best-Dressed Dealer in the World, he's got an outfit for everything. Riding? No sweat. He's got the jodhpurs and the boots. Tennis? Got the whites. Diving? Got the blacks. Skiing …?

No. Nothing. Not a thing. That's what he hadn't seen.

And Jackie was a skier. Took her skiing vunce too, she got ze bumps all over.

So the stuff isn't here because he took it and he went to St. Moritz.

Or …?

Fuck off.

Or …?

It isn't here because he took it to the cleaners. Or he lost it, or he ripped it, or he never owned it to begin with.

Listen
—
I'm sorry
.

Shit. He was standing there examining the closet. Stranded between the pulls of not thinking too much and not thinking quite enough. He got down on his haunches and looked around the floor; checked the corners of the closet; saw the big yellow box. He pulled it out and could feel that it was empty. In the light, he looked at the label.

Koflach, 911 VIP, GröBe 44
.

A top-of-the-line ski boot for a top-of-the-line skier. And the only place on earth you take a ski boot is skiing. Okay? You want to say it's at the shoemakers?

No
.

St. Moritz.

You are truly amazing, Dr. Watson
.

He went back to the living room, picked up his overcoat and turned out the light.

Going through the door now, he stopped and then turned, looking back through the darkness. At the bedroom closet, he hesitated, thought. He was thinking, Hey Watson, what the devil're you doing? but he knew what he was doing. He picked up the blue Garcia .45 and sighted down the barrel at a target on the wall. He drew the thing back now and tested it for weight—aluminum, light—but he picked up the Terrier and figured he was home. He swung out the cylinder and checked the full load. Using the ejector, he spilled out the cartridges and held them in his hand. Jackie had it loaded with a big low-velocity two-hundred grainer that'd stop a little truck.

He sighted at the wall again and dry-fired twice. Then he reloaded it and packed it in his belt.

20

Cy in the car saying, “This is how it went.” They were cruising Santa Monica, heading for the ocean under cinderblock skies. “Okay, so I went to see Schneider in New York but that wasn't the only reason. I was there to see a guy,” Cy said. “I need to get some money for a flick and he's a guy that gets money. Okay? I had dinner with him Thursday at The Palm, it's like eating in a foxhole. I mean it. It's a war zone. It's noisier'n war. Anyway, the guy—”

“What's his name?”

“Abdajanian. Slovo Abdajanian. You think he'd have a nickname …? No, you call him Slovo. Get
that
around your tongue. You'd do anything to avoid it.” Cy jumped a light. “Where was I?”

“I don't know,” Burt said. “Having dinner with an Armenian rug merchant.”

“No. You don't want to get him wrong,” Cy said. “Slovo's connected, he's a very influential guy, does a lotta favors for the biggies. I don't know where they all come from. Iran. Japan. These're guys've got funny-colored faces and a Bentley at the curb. Some of it's oil money. Real estate. Smartass arbitrage. Other hand I did a little business with Slovo over
Children of the Sand
. I go to a meeting there're guys there with bad nose-colds and Colombian accents. You wouldn't want to make any Juan Valdez jokes, you're getting where I am.”

“Keep going,” Burt said.

“So we schmooze. We have dinner and we talk about the script. I got a story, okay? About a guy—listen to this, Burt—he goes into the air traffic controllers' room at Kennedy—delivering coffee? Pulls an M-16. Guys're held hostage. Planes're going—”

“
Cy?
”

“What?” Cy looked at him, genuinely puzzled.

“Roll it back. You're at dinner—okay? What happened?”

“Jesus,” Cy said. “I was
telling
you what happened, we talked about the picture.”

Burt took a breath. He said, “
Then
what happened?”

“
Then
,” Cy said, “we got laid, we smoked dope. We went up to some apartment.”

“A house?” Burt said.

“You mean a
whore
house? No, Birdy. You don't understand these things. This was just an apartment. I don't want to call it ‘just,' it's a penthouse triplex. It's a guy that's got a pad.”

“What's his name?”

“The guy? I don't know. I think it's Ed. Or it's Ned Ted Fred. Maybe Jed. I don't know. I don't know what he does, but whatever he does I'd like to do some for a while. He's got a
triplex
, Birdy. He
knows
something, right? Anyway he's got about eighty-five people kind of rattling around. He's got a guy in the kitchen cooking coke for him, huh? Scared the shit outta me too. I kept thinking, Richard Pryor. Like what if it explodes we're on the ninety-seventh floor. You want to know the
names
, Burt, the coke-cooker's Sandy. I go in to him, I say to him—”

“
Cy
,” Burt said.

Cy glancing over now and parking as he spoke. “Come on,” he said suddenly. “I have to get some air. I need to breathe.”

They walked along the concrete path above the ocean and the pounding of the surf. Leaning on the rail now and looking at the shimmering Pacific and the sand, Burt could start to think about a forty-foot cruiser. Tahiti. The captain deserting all the rats.

“I get clutchy,” Cy said, “and I forget how to breathe. Like I can't get air. Like I'm drowning. I'm dry but I'm drowning.” Inhaling now and leaning on the rail. “Does that ever happen?”

“To me? I remember how to breathe,” Burt said. “Where it gets me is the stomach. Go on. Will you finish?”

“Want a drink?” Cy said. He had a flask in his pocket.

“Whisky?” Burt said.

“Chivas.”

Burt drank. He could feel the first tastes of it hitting where he lived.

“Okay, so you know me. You know how I feel about coke, Burt. I don't need it. I don't want to have a heart attack
plus
I'm pretty up. What I want … what I want
some
times is down. So I say to this character, You got a little weed? I got very mellowed out. I remember I'm in a hot tub. I remember—only very vaguely—getting laid. I go to sleep, I get up, I got a bladderful of piss.”

“Cy?”

“This is crucial to the story now, Burt. I get up and I find myself a bathroom and it's locked. There's a guy talking in there and I almost kill myself on the fucking phone cord like a fucking tripwire, okay? It's underneath the door. So I listen. The guy says, ‘A hundred thousand shares.' I go
boing
. I think, Christ, I'm getting an inside tip from the majors. I snuggle in closer. Guy says, ‘I don't know how to do it on the sneak so just do it for me, huh? A hundred thousand options on Tate Pharmaceuticals.' Then he says, ‘Don't talk to me about risks, man.' Then he says something I don't hear because he starts to run the water.—Okay?”

“Go on.”

“There's no
on
. That was it.”

“Who was he?”

“I don't know. I heard the goddam water run, I really had to
go
. So I pissed in a ficus plant and left.”

There was silence for a time. Cy took a long and very audible breath. Burt paced around and then drank a little whisky. “So let's get it straight. You're in a stranger's apartment. You're stoned and you hear a guy talking through a door.”

Cy nodded. “I know it sounds crazy but it happened. Okay? I swear. Hey listen—I swear it on my own mother's grave.”

Burt didn't move. “Cy?” Burt said.

“What?”

“We've got the same mother. She's alive.”

21

Mitchell got back to his hotel around four, pretty wasted. Cold. He'd walked alone through cold streets, not finding any taxis, watching his boot marks on virgin snow, another small step for man. When it was over, he could think, he'd be in Baja, or dead. A kind of permanent hot, a kind of permanent cold. So he looked at his footsteps, his marks on the world.