Colin Harrison - The Havana Room

But who owned the steakhouse wasn't my concern. I needed to find Jay and tell him about Bongo Partners and his maybe-rotten deed.

His building in TriBeCa wasn't far from City Hall, a crosstown walk of five minutes, so I set out, finding no comfort in the honk-and-go of Broadway. It was just another wintry Thursday. The snow from the night before was already filthy, and the sky looked like rain. Which would melt not only the snow in the city but all the snow out on Jay's farm. Our tire tracks and footprints from the night before would be lost. But maybe that meant that any bulldozer tracks in the soil would be revealed- the earlier record of Herschel's activity the day before. Was that good? Would it corroborate Poppy's description of events? Something was bothering me about that description, I realized. What was it? Go back to what you were taught, I thought. Which was this: one of the summers I was in law school, I worked in the Brooklyn D.A.'s office, and there was an older career prosecutor named Coover who refused promotion to management and instead- in addition to ruining his teeth by chewing on plastic coffee swizzle sticks- simply banged out one conviction after another. He was a quiet legend. He'd seen any number of slick law students come and go- mostly go, on to lucrative corporate jobs- and wasn't much impressed. I was no exception, nor should I have been, flummoxed as I was trying to square the rules of evidence with the jargon of police write-ups. But early in my time, Coover had seen me puzzling over a simple arrest report for a misdemeanor drug charge and muttered as he passed by, "Worship Chronos, kid." I puzzled over the statement until I remembered that Chronos was the god of time, which led me to understand the invincible truth of simple chronology. I never forgot the lesson, and here it was, essential to understanding what had happened the day before.

But I had already turned the corner to Reade Street and needed now to follow the street numbers. There was number 162, set in a row of similar buildings, with high windows fronting the street, architecturally utilitarian but elegant in its simplicity and impressive in its size. The windows were double-paned and glazed, the facade cleaned and re-pointed, the enclosed foyer up to date, the brasswork polished. I cupped my hand against the glass of the lobby. Men have gotten very comfortable owning such structures, and I could see Jay desiring this building, knowing that it would provide him a steady stream of rental income for the rest of his life, if he so wished. Across the street stood a nearly finished apartment house, a straggler from the recent boom. Around the corner hunched the kind of bar where European tourists hoping to ogle movie stars rub shoulders with fluffed-up girls from Jersey hoping to be ogled as movie stars.

"Bill!" came a voice. "You beat me to it!"

I turned to see Jay pull up in his truck. He hopped out, dressed in a fine suit and blue tie, shaved and shined, ready for business, a big and bouncy man who looked nothing like the stooped wretch I'd seen only seven hours before. Here was the man I'd first met in the Havana Room, large and confident. He looked up and stretched out his arms. "Well, this is it! And the check is in the bank, man."

I let him shake my hand but warned, "We need to talk."

His smile froze. "Sure, I know we do, but first, c'mon, we'll have a look."

He pulled out the key ring he'd received from Gerzon the night before and opened the main door. The foyer was dusty and someone had shoved a thick wad of takeout menus through the mail slot. He moved toward the wide staircase that led to the first floor.

"Wait a minute, Jay," I began, putting a hand on the shoulder of his overcoat. "What happened after we left? Did Herschel's body get found? Did the police deal with it?"

He turned. "I called Poppy this morning- he said the ambulance guys came and declared Herschel dead. They had a little trouble getting him off the tractor." He winced appreciatively. "Had to use an air blower."

"Then?"

"He got taken to Riverhead Hospital and his body was going to be picked up this afternoon. I sent flowers to the family this morning. There's a big funeral home in downtown Riverhead, handles a lot of the black funerals."

I watched Jay's face for worry. He seemed untroubled. Then again, he might be an adept liar. "You know, Poppy said he noticed Herschel out there at ten at night."

"Yes?"

"Kind of weird to be out there on a bulldozer, in the cold."

Jay shrugged. "He was running late."

I was figuring this out as I spoke. "Poppy also said he saw the bulldozer."

"So?"

"At ten at night? A half mile or more away?"

"The bulldozer has lights, good ones."

"But if the dozer had gone over the cliff, how did Poppy see it from the road?"

Jay stared at me. "You got me on that."

"In fact, remember he said something like if Herschel had been working there during the day, then his body had been out there about eight hours. He said that."

"He did?"

"That means Poppy didn't see him working in the night."

Jay held up his hands. "Poppy's always gotten stuff screwed up, Bill. He got hit in the head by a sledgehammer when he was a kid. Never finished fourth grade."

I wasn't convinced. "You notice that Herschel wasn't wearing any socks?"

"No."

"Makes you sort of wonder what a guy is doing working out in the cold on a bulldozer with no socks," I said.

"He was a pretty tough old guy."

Tough old guys usually keep their feet warm, in my experience, but I didn't press it. "This whole deal is fucked up," I muttered. "From top to bottom. I help you with a real estate transaction and end up moving a dead black guy? Your dead black guy, okay? That pisses me off, Jay." A fleck of my spit hit his face. "Then the police find us? I don't like it."

Jay held up his hands. "I didn't know Herschel had gone off the edge. Poppy's note didn't say that, right? I know you're worried about it. Don't be. It's fine. Poppy worked it out. He told me this morning. He's known Herschel's family a long time."

"What was going on out there, anyway?"

He nodded, anticipating the question. "I asked Herschel to do some grading for me a week ago. The road was all washed out, and we had a lot of gravel on the other side of the property. He and his family rent an old house on the adjacent property. I still have some trucks and that bulldozer in the barn there."

"What about the police?"

"I called them this morning," Jay said. "I've known these guys my whole life. It's all right. Herschel obviously had a heart attack."

"Why is it obvious?"

"He's sitting there, dead on the tractor. Not a scratch on him. Long history of heart trouble, pericarditis, pulmonary edema. Working in the cold often gives-"

I didn't want to hear a lot of medical jargon from a layman. "Did they ask you why you were out there on the same night that Herschel died?"

"Yeah, they did."

"What did you say?"

"I told them I'd just finished the deal and I wanted to be sure some grading had gotten done."

"Which is pretty close to the truth."

"The first part of that is the truth, Bill. What else could it be? Herschel didn't do his grading on time and then was in a hurry to get started before the snow came too heavy, and then went out there in the cold on the bulldozer and had a goddamn fucking heart attack."

"And if they come to me with the same question?"

Here Jay's face went slack and he stared through me, eyes seemingly focused on his own imaginings. He was, I felt, reminding himself of an idea or belief. "I doubt they'll ask you," he said.

I went on to the question of the deed. "I checked on the records of the building and I think you've got a problem."

"You do, huh?" Jay scooped up the menus and dropped them into the trash. "I don't."