Peter Spiegelman - Red Cat

“How would she have met Holly?”

“I don’t know how they met- maybe Holly called her. I have no fucking idea.”

“Do you think Stephanie could have-”

“No, absolutely not. Steph had nothing to do with this. Nothing.”

His voice was a monotone, and he’d stared at the carpet the whole time, as if there was something hidden in the weave that only he could see. It was only when Mike asked about Holly being pregnant that David had looked up. His face was flushed, and for an instant there was a tiny, bitter smile.

“It’s not me,” he’d said.

Mike’s voice was gentle. “Condoms fail.”

“It’s not me.”

“And Holly never-”

“She never said a word about it.”

“Could she have said something to Stephanie?” Mike had asked.

“I don’t know what she said or didn’t say, but Steph…she wouldn’t believe it.”

He’d gone to the kitchen after that, to make coffee.

Mike put his hands in his pockets and paced some more. “It didn’t help that he lied to McCue,” he said.

“About being here with Stephanie all evening? He was confused- he made a mistake.”

Mike pursed his lips. “Call it what you want; the cops will see it as an alibi that doesn’t stick.”

“Whose alibi?”

He shook his head. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

Mike and I turned as David reappeared. There was an empty creamer in his hand and a confounded look on his face.

“The coffee machine…” he said. His voice was vague and very tired.

“I’ll get it,” I said.

In the cavern of David’s stone and steel kitchen, the remains of a skirmish: coffee beans scattered on the countertop, the coffee grinder empty, unplugged, tipped on its side, a box of filter papers on the floor, with a measuring spoon and David’s coat. I picked up his coat and everything else, and I ground the beans. While I was waiting for the coffee to brew, I saw the bottle of vodka, uncapped beside the sink. Shit.

I found a tray and carried the coffee out. Mike and David had migrated to the dining room. They sat at the long oval table, and David stared at himself in the glass top. Mike looked as if he were waiting for an answer, though none seemed forthcoming.

“I’ll call her myself, if you like, David, but she’s got to be told what happened. And I’ve got to meet with her.”

David sighed and hoisted himself up. “I’ll do it, for chrissakes,” he said, but he couldn’t muster the energy for petulance. He left the room, and Mike looked at me.

“Has he been drinking?” Mike asked. I nodded. “He has a problem with that?”

“I don’t know.”

He picked up his coffee mug. “Beautiful,” he muttered, “fucking beautiful.”

David returned red-eyed and told us he hadn’t reached Stephanie. Her cell was off, and all her parents would say was that she was out for the day. He’d left a message. Mike gave up on more questioning for the moment. He pulled on his coat and fished in his pockets for his gloves.

“You’ll call if you get anything on Coyle?” he asked. I nodded and saw him to the door. “You’ve got to keep him together,” he whispered, but he had no suggestions of how.

I found David in the kitchen, bottle in one hand, glass in the other.

“Maybe not the best idea now,” I said.

He went to the fridge and held his glass under the ice dispenser. “Don’t start,” he said, but there was nothing behind it.

“You have things to do that will go better if you’re sober.”

“I called Stephanie. She wasn’t there.”

“I’m talking about calling Ned.”

David covered his ice cubes, and then some. He took a gulp and leaned against the kitchen counter and sighed. “I told him I wasn’t coming in.”

“You need to tell him what’s going on.”

“What business is it of his?”

“You run M and A, David; Ned runs the firm. He needs to know what’s happening, and what may happen. He needs to prepare.”

“Prepare for what?” David looked up. His face was blotchy and his eyes were sunken. “What do I tell him to be ready for, Johnny? Me in handcuffs? Or Steph, maybe? Maybe both of us? What the fuck should he expect?” He rubbed his hand back and forth across his forehead.

“Just tell him what’s going on.”

He stared past my shoulder. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he whispered.

I took the glass from him, and he didn’t argue. “Do you want me to call?” I asked, and after a while he nodded. I emptied the glass in the sink and took him by the elbow. We went into the living room and I sat him on a long white sofa. He looked up at me.

“I didn’t think…it would end up like this.” His speech was slurred and his eyelids were teetering. I wasn’t sure which it he was talking about.

“Don’t be dramatic, David. It hasn’t ended up like anything, yet. Nothing’s ended.”

“That video…Steph was so angry.”

“Nothing’s ended,” I said again. “There are things we can do.”

He took my wrist in his old man’s hand, and I could feel the trembling up my arm. “Jesus,” he sighed. “I am so tired.”

I went to the kitchen to make the call, and when I came out again, David was asleep. His chin was on his chest and his breathing was heavy. Now and then he moaned and twitched, like a dog being chased in his dreams.

A jaundiced sunset was seeping through the clouds as I drove into Tarrytown, and it tinted the Hudson in the colors of a faded bruise. It was just past four; I’d come to see Kenny Hagen, maintenance manager of the Van Winkle Court condominiums, and Jamie Coyle’s uncle. I turned west off Route 9, onto College Avenue, and worked my way toward the river. Walls of dirty snow were plowed up on the roadsides, and I missed two intersections but eventually found the place. It didn’t look worth the trouble.

Van Winkle Court was an ugly circle of two-story garden apartment buildings, eight squat bunkers with mock brick siding and white vinyl trim. Except for a man with a salt spreader, working the footpaths between the buildings, the complex looked abandoned in the waning light. I watched the man roll the spreader to a flight of stairs, bump it down to a basement doorway, and go inside. I got out of my rented Nissan and followed.

I went through a metal door into a low cinderblock corridor. To my right was a storage room, and lots of tools. A short man in a green jacket was inside, parking a salt spreader beside a pile of folded tarpaulins. He looked at me and pulled off his gloves. His accent was heavy Spanish, and his English was limited.

“Help you?” he said.

“Kenny Hagen?”

The man pointed. “Down there Kenny.” I nodded and went down the hall.

I found Kenny in the office he shared with a squad of old kitchen ranges. They were dented and scorched, and layered in grease and ancient food, and so was he. Kenny was close to sixty, thin and lined, and his face was ruddy where it wasn’t smudged with dirt. His grimy plaid sleeves were rolled over a thermal undershirt, and there was an old Screaming Eagle tattoo on the back of one hand. A dollop of what looked like tomato sauce made a red comma on his chin. He was fiddling with a soldering iron and a little motor when I came in, and the air smelled of hot metal. He looked up from his card-table desk and set the motor down. His eyes were small and blue behind taped wire glasses. He ran a veined hand through his white hair.

“You need something?” he asked. His voice was deeper than his size suggested, and I figured it was the cigarettes. There was a full ashtray on the table, and a pack of Marlboros next to it. He propped the soldering iron on the rim of the ashtray, and fired up a smoke with a white plastic lighter.