Dead Cat Bounce Read online

  “Don’t you have to go to a regular college first?”

  She didn’t answer that, she just glared at him.

  “Look,” he said, “don’t worry about the money. You worry about getting in. I can pay for school.”

  She sucked in a big breath, held it, blew it out. “This has to happen regular, Dad. You know what I mean? Normal, like everyone else. I don’t want you visiting the dean of students with a baseball bat.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She gave him a look. “Oh, please. Sometimes I feel like my whole life fell off the back of a truck.”

  “Count your blessings,” he said. “I been feeling like the truck fell on me.”

  They walked the long avenue blocks across Fourteenth Street to Union Square. She’d gone quiet on him, and he let her brood. He’d never been much of a conversationalist, and he found himself wondering if he ought to bring her down to see Fat Tommy, just so they wouldn’t have this silence hanging between them. He didn’t have to, though, he could sense that she had something on her mind, that she was working her way around to it, getting ready to tell him. It was an ungenerous thought, but he figured she was going to ask him for money. Why would she come, otherwise? It’s a long trip from the New Jersey burbs into Manhattan, and she was just a kid. Would she do it just to say hello? Just to get him talking to Donna again? But you compare everyone else to yourself, he thought. Maybe she feels something for you, maybe she’s not dead inside, maybe she’s not as big an asshole as you.

  They stopped to watch the skateboard kids working on their moves on the steps of the park in the middle of Union Square.

  “Dad?” she said. She hated to do it, he could tell. “I have to ask you a favor.”

  “Okay.” He watched the muscles in her jaw working.

  “You have to promise me you won’t do anything to him, okay? But I want you to check out this guy, Mom’s friend, Mr. Prior.”

  “What do you want to know about him?”

  She shook her head. “There’s something funny about the guy, Dad. He’s got a weird way of looking at me, and I don’t like it. It’s not just like leering, either. There’s something wrong with the way he stares. I mean, I sort of expect middle-aged guys to look, and everything, but this guy is not about just looking. And Mom is such an idiot right now, pardon me for saying it, but I mean…”

  She had been right to be so careful, making him promise not to touch Prior. He didn’t want to lose her, and he didn’t want to give Donna yet another reason to hate him, but…“What?”

  She looked away from him. “She’s got her head up her ass, okay? Somebody wants to be her new best friend, all they have to do is smile at her, for God’s sake. I mean, she’s so much smarter than this, I knew this guy was a creep the first time I saw him, okay, and I learned how to do that from her, but right now she can’t see it. If you give me something on the guy, I can probably get her away from him. But you have to promise me you’ll let me do this. She won’t listen to you right now. Okay? And you have to be careful.”

  “Careful of what?”

  “Mr. Prior is connected. I asked around a little bit, and I was told he knows all the cops in town, he gives money to all the local politicians, his lawyer is some big shot in the county government.” She looked up at him, took a piece of paper out of her pocket, and gave it to Stoney. It had Prior’s name and address written on it. The town was Alpine, New Jersey, more of an enclave than a town, a haven for rich people who valued their privacy. He looked up from the paper at his daughter. She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again.

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to say it,” she said, her voice small.

  “No, go on.”

  He watched her thinking it over. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry for how this is gonna sound, okay, but you’re the only person I know who’s a mean enough bastard to take this guy on.”

  He laughed.

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “You know,” he said, “my sponsor, Benny, he says I have to change. Can’t be what I was anymore or I’ll go back to drinking again.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But do this for me first, all right? Then get better.”

  He laughed again, threw his head back, and let it go. She looked at him, appraisal in her eyes. “You’re different already,” she said. “Listen, I’m sorry I compared you to the Doberman down the block.”

  “That’s all right,” he said. “Even bad dogs have their uses.”

  He saw a flash of white teeth then, an actual smile, but it was quickly replaced with a fierce scowl. “Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Mom’s having a graduation party for me next week. Will you come?”

  “You want me to?”

  She nodded at him without changing her expression. She didn’t seem happy, and he began to feel like a guy invited to his own hanging. “All right,” he said. “Sure.”

  It was a lonelier place when he got back to the apartment. He couldn’t remember feeling that way about it since he’d moved in. Another one, he thought, another new sensation I can’t quite identify. He’d gotten used to not feeling much of anything at all, unless you counted the sudden rage that enveloped him when his temper snapped, and now he didn’t know what to do with these resurrected emotions. They had been dead for so long he’d forgotten all about them. Since he’d been sober, though, they’d come raging back to life and they would roar through his head like some new disease to which he had no natural immunity. There seemed to be no medium for him; no mild euphoria, no slight depression. Benny had warned him that this would happen, but knowing it was no defense. His moods seesawed madly between idiotic heights of exhilaration and black depths of suicidal despair. I should be used to this, he thought, I ought to have expected it. He hadn’t, though. It had been so good to see his daughter, pissed off or not, and now that she was gone, Mrs. Cho’s studio, where he was living, seemed colder and meaner than he could remember it ever being. He stared at the mute television set. He had an urge to turn it on, if only to fill the empty space with human sounds. He sat there looking at it, and it stared back with its blank gray face. He couldn’t muster up enough interest to get up out of his chair and go look for the remote.

  The telephone was right next to him, so he picked it up and punched in Benny’s number. He knew almost immediately that Benny wasn’t home, because Benny was an old-fashioned guy, he didn’t have voice mail or an answering machine, Benny either picked up the phone or he didn’t, and in this case he didn’t. Stoney counted six rings, and then two more just in case Benny was in the bathroom, but there was still no answer.

  TWO

  Seeing Stoney made Tommy Rosselli feel old. It wasn’t Tommy’s fault, he’d been shot in a robbery the previous year and he was still recovering. The doctors who had saved his life had taken a bullet out of his back, but there was another one still in there, lodged too close to the spine for the doctors to remove. A third one had hit him high in the back of his shoulder and passed on through, and now the healing exit wound was an angry red and white puckered scar that he didn’t like looking at. On cold days he swore he could feel the bullet that was still in him, dull and heavy with the malice of the man who had put it there. The thought of it made him feel tired, discouraged, disappointed. It was hard for him to take, because Tommy had always been a man who embraced life, even in the midst of trouble and strife he found things to savor in almost every experience that passed his way. Fat Tommy Rosselli was a man who loved, in no particular order, young women, Dame Joan Sutherland, fine food, fat women, Luciano Pavarotti, good wine, middle-aged women, expensive cars, the company of competent men, women with gray hair who still knew how to take care of themselves. Thin women made him nervous, as did the concept of denying oneself until the very shape of one’s body was changed.

  This thing with the bullet was different, though, and even though the constant ache was more of an annoyance than a real pain, it
reminded him of his own fragility. The pills the doctor prescribed for him eased his discomfort but they also dulled his mind, and so he didn’t like to take them.

  Stoney, his partner, was not a source of sympathy. “You gotta get out and walk around, you fat fuck. It’s summertime, for chrissake, you stay up in that loft much longer, the cleaning lady is gonna put you on her list of shit that gets dusted once a month.” Stoney was right, of course, though it would not have killed him to show a little bit of human feeling. Understanding. He’d never do it, though. Stoney had changed, somewhat, since he’d put down the booze and the dope, but he hadn’t changed that much.

  Tommy had the cabdriver let him out around the corner from his destination. Another useless subterfuge, because Stoney knew him too well to ever believe that Tommy would be out walking, following his doctor’s orders without someone yelling at him first. He did it anyway, tipped the driver a five, and watched the guy drive away. He walked slowly to the corner, pausing to consider the image looking back at him from a store window.

  He might be feeling down but he still looked good. He was wearing a new suit, Italian wool with a subtle pinstripe cut to fit his ample frame perfectly, gray silk collarless shirt. The shirt wasn’t Italian, it had been made in Hong Kong. You can’t have everything, though, and it was a good shirt nonetheless. He leaned on his cane and winked at his reflection. An extra-large Don Johnson, he thought. Very cool.

  Stoney was sitting at a table in a sidewalk café on Seventh Avenue South, down in the Village, smoking a cigarette. New York City’s billionaire mayor didn’t smoke, didn’t like cigarette smoke or the people who produced it, and as a result you weren’t supposed to light up anywhere except inside your own house or your own car, preferably with the windows rolled up. Stoney, however, didn’t give a shit what the mayor liked, and he exhaled gray smoke out of his nose as he eyed Tommy making his unhurried way up the sidewalk. He kicked out a chair when Tommy got close.

  “Good to see you out in the sun,” he said. “Bet you forgot what it looked like.”

  Tommy puffed his chest out, tried to look insulted. “Every day,” he said, “I take a lilla walk. Just like the doctore wasa tell me.”

  “Yeah, sure you do. You walk from your couch to your refrigerator. How you feeling?”

  Tommy sat down, leaned his cane against the table, and straightened the creases in his trousers. “I gonna be okay,” he said. “Just take time.”

  “You still taking those Percocets?”

  Tommy shook his head. “I don’t like,” he said. “They makea me tire.”

  “That’s too bad. My daughter came in to visit me yesterday.”

  “Marisa?” Tommy brightened. “How old is she now?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Oh my God, seventeen.” Tommy shook his head. “You tell her, next time she gonna come see me. Seventeen, very danger to be seventeen. How she’sa do? She’s okay with this thing between you and Donna?”

  “I don’t know.” Stoney took a last drag on his cigarette, flicked it in the general direction of the gutter. “Marisa’s not like her mother. You only get to see what she wants you to see.”

  “Smart girl,” Tommy said, nodding his head. “Grown up now. Become a woman.”

  “I suppose. She says I should call Donna.”

  Tommy watched his friend’s face, said nothing. He himself would have called long ago, he would have sent flowers, candy, singing telegrams, he would have campaigned, he’d have waged war to win his way back into her bed, but what worked for him might not work for Stoney. He knew that Stoney had not given up, though, because he did not yet have that melancholy and eviscerated look common to newly single men. Stoney just looked pissed off. He watched as Stoney reached for another cigarette. He wondered at the guy sometimes. For years, he had watched his friend drink, smoke, snort and generally abuse himself, and yet the bastard was in disgustingly good health. “So? You gonna call?”

  Stoney stuck the new cigarette in his mouth and clicked it alive with a plastic lighter. “I guess I have to,” he said. “I hate to do it, though, you know what I mean? She’s just gonna rip me a new asshole all over again. I don’t know how to get past that.”

  “Marisa must think she’s ready,” Tommy said. “Maybe worth a try, but you’re right, too easy to scream at somebody onna phone. Phone isa no good.” He thought about it for a minute. “In case it was me,” he said, “I’ma send a car to get her. Bring her to meet me at a nice fancy restaurant. You know, flowers, music, wine…” He looked up at Stoney. “Wine for her. Water for you. But you know, nice, nice. She don’t gonna yell at you too much inna nice place. Maybe then you could talk.”

  Stoney was nodding. “Good idea,” he said. “Much better than calling.”

  The waiter came, looked disapprovingly at Stoney’s cigarette, took their order. They both waited until the guy was out of earshot before resuming their conversation. “You smoke too much,” Tommy said, happy to find some defect in Stoney to talk about. Stoney eyed him for a second, then shrugged.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know. It’s not so bad now, believe it or not. I cut down a lot. I was going nuts for a while, there, you know, crawling outta my own skin. Benny told me not to worry about it. ‘One thing at a time,’ he told me. Anyway, better to kill yourself with butts than with dope and alcohol, it’s a much easier way to die. You don’t lose everything first.”

  Tommy had never met Benny, but Stoney spoke of him often. He didn’t know much about AA, but he knew that Benny was Stoney’s AA rabbi, he was the guy who had taken Stoney under his wing, showed him the ropes. Tommy was naturally suspicious of new relationships and new confidences, but this AA thing Stoney was into seemed to be a vast improvement over the self-destructive, suicidal course he had been on before, so Tommy kept his misgivings to himself. He had made discreet inquiries when Stoney first told him about joining. Some of the cops watching over him in the hospital had been acquainted with AA, and they had given the program mixed reviews. “Yeah, sure,” one cop told him. “They’ll help him quit drinking, all right. But just be ready, ’cause he’s gonna cut you loose. They won’t let him hang with you no more.” It hadn’t happened yet, but Tommy was waiting and watching, observing the ongoing metamorphosis in his friend. Tommy was a keen student of human behavior and a master of the art of subtle manipulation, but this new aspect of Stoney’s personality continued to surprise him. “Maybe you gonna quit next year?”

  Stoney shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. Listen, I need your help with something. I need somebody to check out a guy over in Jersey for me, somebody good. You know a guy?” He handed Tommy a card with a name and an address written on it.

  Tommy read the name off the card. “Charles David Prior,” he said. “Alpine, New Jersey. Okay. No problem. I gonna check.” He left his questions unasked.

  Stoney stared out into the street. “Town the guy lives in is like Beverly Hills East, serious money. Real serious.”

  A rich guy, Tommy thought, and his predatory instincts were aroused, but he gave no sign of it. He did wonder, briefly, what Charles David Prior had done to attract Stoney’s attention. “Okay. Don’ worry, I think I know the right guy, he gonna find out everything.”

  “Thanks, Tommy.”

  “De nada. You gonna meet with Donna?”

  Stoney nodded. “I have to.”

  “Everything gonna be okay, you’ll see. Just do me one favor.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  Fat Tommy wrinkled up his face in distaste. He gestured at Stoney’s clothes, filling the movement with contempt as only a native-born Italian can. “Dress up, lilla bit. Try to look nice. Alla time, blue jean, sweatshirt, sneaker. What’s wrong with you?”

  Stoney looked down at himself. “I don’t even know if I got a suit, Tommy. If I do, it’s at the house.”

  Tommy shook his head. “Minghe,” he said. “After we eat, I gonna take you to a nice tailor I know. You look like a fucking bum.” He paused. “You need my help with th
is other sommanabitch, you gotta tell me.”

  “Fine.”

  THREE

  It was just three in the afternoon, barely the beginning of the evening rush hour, but the cab Stoney was in got stuck in a traffic jam down in lower Manhattan. It was on Chambers Street, about four blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge, when Stoney ran out of patience and decided to walk the rest of the way.

  There is a wooden walkway across the bridge, it runs high above the cars in between the two traffic lanes. It’s about a mile across, and Stoney figured it might be another mile through Brooklyn Heights, the neighborhood on the far side, over to the building where Tuco lived. No reason not to walk, he thought, late spring day, warm, what the hell. Besides, he’d never done it before, might as well cross it off the list.

  He had come to enjoy walking again during the months he’d been living back in the city, after all of those years in the Jersey suburbs. Not all New Yorkers do, though. Tommy Bagadonuts kept his car in a garage two blocks from his loft, and when he wasn’t driving, he rode in cabs. Guy likes taking care of himself, Stoney thought, but his weight and health had begun to impose limitations on him that Stoney would not have been able to tolerate. It was frustrating, because Stoney was relatively sure that, if Tommy could just once experience how good it felt to be in shape, he would go nuts for it the way he went nuts for everything he liked. Fat Tommy was the kind of guy, if he liked opera, it wasn’t enough to collect the CDs and go see it at Lincoln Center. He wasn’t happy until he was sleeping with one of the singers. He’d brought a woman home shortly after Stoney moved in with him, a coloratura soprano, whatever that was, thirtyish, a bit heavy, but she had a nice shape and a gorgeous round face that broadcast rosy happiness. The two of them had rampaged through the loft like a pair of rutting Clydesdales. Jesus.

  It was maddening, watching the fat son of a bitch limp around feeling sorry for himself, because Stoney could picture him after a couple of weeks in the gym, he’d have his own nutritionist, his own personal trainer, he’d buy every workout gizmo that he could find, and he would tear a swath through the sea of aerobics instructors like Sherman marching through Georgia. Tommy Bagadonuts rarely did anything at less than full throttle. Thus far, however, Stoney had not managed to get him interested.