Part 11 (1/2)

Swill's was crowded; Karl thought at first this was an after-work office crowd stopping in for a drink. The men and women who formed chic little cliques looked as if they bought their suits and briefcases from the same place. Swill's must have been one of the last places in the city that paid little attention to the city's edicts about smoking.

The suits Karl had noticed first. But most of the other customers in here looked as if they hadn't done an honest day's work in their lives. What was it these days that had so many unemployed, ones who were obviously fit to work? They were all f.u.c.ked-up, lazy kids expecting to be taken care of. Christ, he himself had worked his way, all of his way, through a small college in upstate New York, had come that close to graduating, then done a fine-tuned job on one of the college deans behind the Sigma Kappa fraternity house. It sure wasn't his fault if things had gotten out of hand. There was no way he could have known two of the dean's sycophants-the chair of the phys ed department and the dean of students-would be packing heat, for G.o.d's sakes. Of course the fraternity took it all as a reason to party. They were all drunk; that's what they did. Their parents paid for all of this and the kids got stoned and shot birds off telephone poles.

And because of the whole fracas, he himself had had to get out of town just a month before graduation. His cla.s.s in the contemporary novel hadn't finished, so he'd gotten an incomplete; well, that's the way it went. But he didn't flaunt his college education; that could be taken wrong by some people who might claim he was overeducated for this kind of work.

”Maybe,” said Candy, ”we should be going after this p.r.i.c.k.” He flicked his thumbnail against the jacket photo of Paul Giverney.

It amused Karl that the present contract was put out on a writer, someone in the literary scene, something Karl thought he knew a little about. It was a milieu with which he wasn't totally unfamiliar. There'd been places like Swill's at college; he'd had many an argument about Hemingway standing at the bar in Loser's-Hemingway and Ayn Rand (talk about your butch writers!).

Karl had paired up with Candy for a host of reasons that went beyond Candy's wanting to operate independently of the Fabriconi family (for whom he'd worked for several years). He, too, didn't like being told to take out this guy or that guy, no questions asked or answered, just do it.

”s.h.i.+t,” Candy had said back then. ”It's like the guy's already walking around dead meat and don't know it. I mean I'd know more about his stupid Irish setter than I would about Conrad Gravely.”

Karl raised his eyebrows. ”That was your hit?”

Candy nodded.

”That was cla.s.sy, that was an A job, man. You picked that poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d off without so much as touching a hair on the guys with him. I always wondered who did that hit.”

Modestly, Candy rocked his hand in a comme ci, comme ca gesture. ”But then they find out the vic-Connie Gravely-wasn't the one turned on them after all. It was some other guy.” Candy blew on his coffee. ”What a b.u.mmer.”

”Not your fault. You shouldn't take the heat for that. You were doing what you got paid to do, that's all.”

”So when that happened, I walked into Gio's office (this was Giovanni Fabriconi) and told him I was finished, to get another b.u.t.ton man.”

Karl laughed. ”I bet he liked that.”

”Oh, yeah, only not enough to let me live. More than one goon came after me.”

”You reduced his staff considerably's what I'm thinking.”

Candy snorted. ”Considerably's right. Thing is, if they'd let me follow Gravely around for a few days-h.e.l.l, even twenty-four hours-I'd've known. I got this instinct, see.”

And this instinct, see was the other reason Karl had teamed up with him: Candy had an uncanny ability to intuit whether the mark had done what he was accused of or, on a broader spectrum, whether he deserved to die, accusations aside.

”But these guys, the ones like Gio, all they see is getting theirs back. They ain't really too particular about the truth, you know?”

Karl knew. And it was the only time he'd ever heard anyone else voice his own concern. Once he had questioned the guilt of the guy he was supposed to relieve of his life, and said so, and got no thanks for his concern.

”f.u.c.k you care?” one of the other guys had said, in real nervous agitation, shoving the slide back on his own .9 mm.

Truth. That was a pretty heady word for a couple of hit men to be tossing around. So those were the reasons, aside from Karl's just plain liking Candy. Karl knew he was good at sizing up a man, but in a more superficial way, like fitting him for a suit. It could be all that education he'd had (whereas Candy hadn't made it past the first year of high school) that had muddied the waters of his perception. Too much Hemingway. Everybody was guilty to Hemingway.

Now in Swill's, Karl knew that Candy was only half serious about going after Giverney. They weren't interested in pro bono work. And, of course, they knew nothing about Paul Giverney other than his being a sensationally popular writer.

Karl answered, ”Yeah, well, we don't know what Ned ever did to Giverney. Maybe he screwed around with his wife.”

Candy turned to the back flap copy. ”His wife's name is Molly.”

”What? You think you'll find it in the bio? Her telling Giverney Ned Isaly tried to screw her?” Karl reached over and turned the book around. ”I still think it's a s.h.i.+tty jacket.”

Candy's forehead creased in deep perplexity, as if being called upon to authenticate a painting at the Met. ”You know, it kind of fits the book, though.”

”How come? Is it gray and rainy and everybody's sunk in anomie?”

”In f.u.c.king what?”

”Anomie. I like that word.”

”Ho, ho, well, f.u.c.k your college education. Remember, you never graduated, same as me.” Candy s.n.a.t.c.hed back the book and pretended to read.

Karl could have pointed out where they never graduated from, but he didn't. ”So what's it about?”

”I've only got around fifty pages read. It's way out weird. It sounds like science fiction.”

”Philip K. d.i.c.k?” Karl asked. This was the one writer Candy knew about. For some reason he was crazy about Philip K. d.i.c.k.

”No, no, no. It ain't nothin' like his stuff. No, in Giverney's book it's like everything around this person, this woman, has sort of collapsed. Everything we see around her has changed.”

”Anomie.” Sunk in anomie. He should get a medal.

”Whatever. Near the beginning she goes into this drugstore-well, that's not the right word for it now because it's all changed. Now it's one of them old-fas.h.i.+oned pharmacies. She parks her car and when she gets out she sees the other cars in line are old models. So she's got this new Lexus and the others look like they're straight from the 1940s and '50s, like a two-toned Chevy Belair. When she goes inside what used to be this familiar drugstore-”

At this point a scrawny girl-or woman-holding two beer bottles by their necks paused at their table and looked at Candy's turned-around baseball cap and shades. ”That is so yesterday.” She walked on, swinging the beers.

Karl laughed. ”Told you.”

Candy looked back and forth from the girl to Karl. ”If she only knew. Her life in her hands.”

”Go on.”

”Okay, so she goes in, into the pharmacy, and everything's changed. Instead of all gla.s.s shelves and chrome there's dark wood paneling and those colored bottles these pharmacies used to have along the rear counter, beakers, they're called. And this guy, the pharmacist, that's where it gets even more hairy. The guy is still the same one she knew, same name, same person except he's dressed different, you know, more old-timey. And he knows her, calls her by her name-it's Laura-asks about her kid. He's like nothing ever happened-”

”And it's not like Philip K. d.i.c.k?”

”No! I told you, it's not like him. It's more like-what's that guy, that program that used to have a lot of episodes about people turning up in the old hometown and finding it changed?”

”Rod Serling. Rod Serling-what was the name of the show . . . ? Never mind, go on.”

”Then she goes to this boutique next door.

”In the windows were dresses on headless and armless mannequins, dresses that might have been stylish back in the thirties or forties. A pleated skirt, the polka-dot one with small capped sleeves-”

”Jesus,” Karl said. ”Is this supposed to be scary or is it set on Seventh Avenue?” Karl twirled his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. ”Though come to think of it, I guess Seventh Avenue is scary, I mean if you have to deliver s.h.i.+t there.”

”He's just setting the scene, Chrissakes. So she looks in and sees this woman, Miss Fleming, who owns the joint:”Miss Fleming looked as she always did. No, not quite. Her hair was done differently, in a coil at the nape of her neck-”

Karl slid down in his seat. ”Come on, C, get to the scary part.”

”Well, but this is scary, you think about it. To have everything changed just a little, just enough to make you think maybe it's her that's changed.” Candy sat back, pleased with this a.n.a.lysis. ”Okay, I'll leave out the beauty shop business-”