THIRTEEN

The morning after my first murder, Mr. Mancini, the manager of The Fidelity, where I had been staying since I left the hospital, knocked on my door and told me I had a phone call.

Who is it? I said.

Yeah, yeah, let me check with my secretary, shitface, he said, smiling.

Since my arrival at his establishment, Mr. Mancini had called me shitface six times that I knew of, and once when I asked him if I could have an extra key to my room he had taken a baseball bat out from under his desk and smacked it against the wall. He also smiled constantly and really unpleasantly, and, even though I wanted to try very badly, he was too big to even imagine beating the shit out of.

Actually, I had imagined beating the shit out of him several times. Each time, as I threw the last, devastating punch, aiming for his throat after I had worked over his midsection and face, I thought of previous imagined triumphs and said, who’s the shitface now?

Anyway, after I had put some clothes on, I went down to the lobby, attempted to ignore Mr. Mancini, who had taken up position behind his desk, and picked up the greasy yellow phone that sat on a stack of old coin-collector magazines in the corner. Then I walked over to the Odessa Café on Tompkins Square and took a seat at the back and waited for the knockout to walk in.

It’s not every day that you have the opportunity to break bread with someone you’ve murdered the night before, and while it had all been, to borrow and permute Anthony’s vocabulary, unpleasantly messy (basically I had fucked it up), continuing the acquaintance appealed greatly to me, not least because as I left, one of the contortionists had stuck two hundred dollars in my pocket with her foot.

I had spent a good quarter of my earnings at the Horseshoe, drinking Cape Cods and hoping that, even though he didn’t work there anymore, Anthony would show up so that we could compare notes. He did not. I finally asked the bartender on duty about him and was told that Job, if that’s who I meant, hadn’t been there for weeks.

The knockout and all her nice proportions arrived a few minutes after I did. She was wearing a maroon slip, a black leather bomber, pink-tinted glasses, and a kiss-my-ass grin that she tore off and tossed in my lap as she sat down.

Hi, I said.

Get us some drinks, and soup, I want borscht, she said.

A waitress who had clearly been eating too many pierogi for too many years and who was wearing a lot of eye makeup and what looked to me like a wig she had possibly inherited from a great-aunt in the old country came over and called me sweetheart and I ordered.

While we waited, the knockout pulled out a cell phone and made a couple of calls, one to a guy named Bob, who apparently did bodywork for her, and one to Mr. Kindt.

He wants to talk to you, she said.

About what?

She didn’t bother to answer, just handed me the phone then got up and went in the direction of the toilets.

Henry? Mr. Kindt said.

Yes, I said.

Come to see me this afternoon, dear boy, after you have finished with your lunch and conversation.

I killed this lunch partner of mine last night, you know, murdered her, I said.

Yes, well, that is what she wants to talk to you about — listen to her, she is quite articulate and quite direct. She can be of great help.

Great help with what?

Mr. Kindt laughed. With any, if you should choose to carry them out, future murders, he said.

I knew what you meant.

I know you did. Was the pay satisfactory?

It was.

Good, and there will of course be more. So for now just think of last night as a test, a trial run. A little fine-tuning is in order, that’s all.

Does Cornelius know about this lunch I’m having? I asked.

Of course he does, my boy, he is in charge, how could he not? Now, finish up there, then come and see me.

I hung up just as the borscht arrived. A couple minutes later we were both eating sweet, airy challa bread, spooning up the red stuff, drinking Cape Cods, and looking at each other.

Yeah, I know you saw me naked, so what? she said.

She leaned forward, expressing some serious décolletage, and stuck one of her nails a little farther than was comfortable into my forearm.

Did you appreciate? she asked.

Yes, I appreciated.

Of course you did.

I had liked the afterimage so much in fact that after I had left the scene of the crime I went back to my little room in Mr. Mancini’s flop and wrestled around with it for a while. But of course I didn’t tell her that. Instead, I took a sip of my Cape Cod, or whatever we were drinking, probably just Coke, it doesn’t matter, and said, O.K., talk to me, tell me why I’m here, tell me what I did wrong.

Everything, genius.

That’s a lot.

You have a way with words.

So I’m told.

By who?

Who or whom?

Let’s say who.

Let’s drop it.

You talk tough, I think I like it.

Now it’s you who likes something.

Who says I just started?

I looked at her. I wished we’d just said all of the preceding, even if it sounded like bad noir dialogue. I wished, after she’d said, everything, genius, and I’d said, that’s a lot, that she hadn’t proceeded to tell me, in detail and pretty directly, how much I sucked.

I already told Cornelius you’re useless.

So what did he say?

He said I should meet with you and, if at all possible, straighten your sorry ass out.

He said it like that?

More or less.

Can you straighten my sorry ass out?

Of course I can.

Why? I mean, why bother? It’s not like I asked to do this.

Why do you think?

I took a bite of borscht-soaked challa and pretended to think about it.

But why does he want me to do this? I said.

You’ll have to ask him that.

I did — later, when I went over to his house.

We’ll discuss motivation another day, he said. Or perhaps I should say the motivation will become clear or clearer later. In the meantime, I will just ask you, as my friend, to help me and my partner, Cornelius, in facilitating this venture. Since my earliest days as a businessman I have been interested in unusual, even improbable, transactions. Don’t forget, after all, that I made my real start in affairs by swimming the length of a lake with my arms bound tightly behind me.

You didn’t mention your arms being tied before.

Well they weren’t, that would have been impossible. I said it just now for effect. But it was nevertheless a transforming experience. When the adventure ended I walked away from Lake Otsego a changed man.

Cornelius told me he was there.

Did he? It’s true that I have known Cornelius for a very long time. He wasn’t much more than a boy then. Nor, for that matter, was I. But at any rate, dear Henry, there is so very much demand for this service, and I am so grateful that you are willing to help and even indulge me.

I was. And had. I mean, the whole time I just sat there and let the knockout disparage me. Of course that hadn’t been entirely about making Mr. Kindt happy. Being insulted then instructed by a beautiful woman about the subject of murder, even fake murder, while eating borscht and drinking Cape Cods or Coke counts as positive in my book.

All right, I said.

All right, what?

I mean all right, I’m enjoying this.

Good, but let’s hope you’re understanding it too.

If you’re going to be sloppy, be sloppy in a big, big way, I said. But it’s better to be neat.

She nodded.

Anthony had his problems, things got out of control, but at least he was neat, I said.

That’s right.

I’m a neat thief, I said.

Even if you are, which I doubt, a neat thief and a neat murderer are not the same thing.