Colin Harrison - The Havana Room

"I did, yes."

"It's Bill, right?"

"Bill Wyeth."

He said, "I was wondering whom I'd let in."

"Just me. I'm looking for Jay."

Cowles had one eye on a computer screen. "Haven't seen him."

"Has he been around?"

"Yes, in fact he was earlier and we discussed- oh, hell, hold on, that's the phone. Here, come on in while I get that." I followed Cowles back toward his office and when I got there he was standing at the window.

"That's good," he said into the receiver. "All the way through?" He listened and nodded. "Sure, all right." He covered the phone. "This will just take a second, Mr. Wyeth, bear with me. Just here- have a seat. My daughter wants to-" He uncovered the phone. "Yes, yes, okay, I'm putting it on, go ahead."

Then he turned on the speakerphone and I could hear a piano, some sweet and romantic sonata trilling into the room. I might have said it was Beethoven's "Fur Elise," but the sound through the phone was poor, as was the quality of the performance. But Cowles was enjoying it, smiling and looking at the phone and nodding his head with the music. Then the playing stopped. "Good, good!" he called heartily, in the way of an encouraging father.

"You liked it?" came a girl's voice. "I only messed up once."

Cowles smiled at me. "Very good, but keep practicing."

"Daddy, I practiced it five times already!"

"How many times did you get it right all the way through?"

"None."

"Do you want to mess it up tomorrow night?"

"No! What do you think?"

"I think you should keep practicing, sweetie."

"Daddy! You're so mean."

"It's true," said Cowles affectionately. "Nothing you can do."

"Daddy!"

"I have someone in my office, Sally, so I'm going to have to go."

"A pianist," I said after he'd hung up.

"Well, hardly. But she likes to play, and she's got a little recital at the Steinway store."

"The Steinway store?"

"On Fifty-seventh Street? Have you ever been? Amazing pianos! Dozens of them. Ebony, mahogany, everything. Even one of John Lennon's. You're not supposed to touch it but everyone does. They have student recitals there, and of course they don't mind if you buy a piano while you're there. It's quite the setting."

I nodded but wondered if I should tell him that Jay had gone to his daughter's basketball game. He'd ask me what it meant, and I couldn't tell him. But why hadn't I seen Cowles at the game? Of course, he might have been busy, or his wife could have been in attendance and I wouldn't have known.

"Now then," Cowles said, "you were looking for Mr. Rainey?"

"Have you seen him?"

"He was in this morning. About the lease?"

I searched his face. "The lease?"

"My lease? He said you and I'd go over it the next day or so?"

I made a vague sound of recognition.

"He offered me a better rate."

"He did?"

"I agreed to lengthen the lease, which he wanted, but I got him to bring the rent down a bit- only fair, in this climate."

"Was he accommodating?"

Cowles smiled. "For a rapacious landlord, yes. He seems- is he new to all this?"

"Why do you ask?"

Cowles let his eyes drift over his family pictures and out the window to the rooftops of lower Manhattan. "A sense, that's all."

A minute later, I stepped back out into the street. The cold cloak of evening had dropped. The prudent thing would have been to go home, order in dinner, and write down all I'd learned. Worship Chronos a bit. I used to be pretty good with complex problems but now I was stumped. Too many shards of information. Martha Hallock had handled the real estate transaction between Jay and Marceno, to the dismay of her own business partner. She'd probably lied to Marceno to clinch the deal. She knew a lot about Jay. There'd been an accident. Poppy was her nephew. How did these things connect? Mrs. Jones had described me so well I'd been successfully recognized. Or maybe they had a photo of me. Allison Sparks didn't mind snooping into a man's private business. And didn't mind telling me that, either. What else? Jay hung out in Brooklyn and probably dated a woman named O. He had some kind of weird drug habit that involved inhaled adrenaline. His occasional girlfriend, Allison Sparks, didn't mind getting kissed by an unemployed lawyer who'd been forced to watch some world-class fellatio the night before. She didn't mind having his tongue shoved down her throat and she didn't mind telling him that she'd liked it. Watching the fellatio had probably made him more aggressive, too. Under the momentary behaviors rose the hungers, the looming desires. Jay wanting to kill the baseball, Martha Hallock waiting bitterly for death, Helmo willing to spy on Jay for a few bucks, Allison needing satisfaction. You could drive yourself nuts with these things. Cowles's daughter played the piano. Jay had lowered Cowles's rent, presumably to keep him in the building. Marceno was waiting for his information. H.J. was waiting for his money. Both expected me to get these things for them, both had made their threats well known. What else? What other pieces could I torment myself with? Ha, Allison had basically conceded, controlled the Havana Room- which would be open that night.

Yes, she'd told me that, in her alluring drunkenness. The Havana Room would be open that night. And I was invited.

Six

ANOTHER NIGHT IN THE CITY. Showered and shaved, wallet full of cash. How good can you look, pal? Best shoes, best suit, killer silk tie. Worried H.J.'s men had discovered where I lived. You never knew, until you knew for sure. A quick look up and down the street. Then dart past the gold lettering and potted evergreens, through the heavy door. Immediately, the smell of steak. Then Table 17, as always. Hanger steak, as always. Oil paintings and table linen. No Allison yet. Mexican busboys sailing through the room with steaming trays. Worried about Jay, yes. Determined to have a good time, yes. The joint was topped-off full, an ocean liner of steak-eaters, a fleshatorium. Action upstairs in the private rooms, judging from the lipstick and aftershave heading up the stairs, action at the bar, crossing its legs, checking its watch, shooting its cuffs. I looked around, wondering which of the other men would be heading into the Havana Room. And then there was Allison, coming out of the kitchen, eyes right on me, tongue peeking from the corner of the mouth I'd kissed six hours before, marching toward me in a red satiny dress, which showed me more than I'd seen before. Knees, cleavage, firm attitude. She looked good, Allison, and she knew it as she bent close to my ear.

"Bill!" she whispered. "I'm shocked."

"Why?"

"You took advantage of me!"

"Might have been the other way around," I said.

Allison looked at me fixedly, thoughts kept in reserve, so close that I could see the mascara on her eyelashes, and I didn't know if she regretted the interlude earlier that day. "Midnight," she said. "Door opens at midnight."

I was there on the dot, of course, stepping casually down the stairs and over the tiled floor to the far booth where I'd sat before, wall sconce and painting next to me. Other men followed and I thought I recognized several from the last time I'd been in the room when it was full, including the two large fellows who'd been examining a set of X rays. My eyes drifted toward the enormous black-eyed nude over the bar. The ancient bartender beneath her, his white hair fuzzed to dissipation, took no notice as he set out drafts and highballs and drinks neat and on the rocks and in shot glasses and the last one tonight, I promise. Within ten minutes, two dozen men had arrived, filling the booths and the barstools.

At that moment the aging literary gentleman I'd seen before came lurching in. Somehow he seemed always to know when the room was open. In his suit and greatcoat he was a pile of elegant ruin, but that night's dosing of booze had torn away his mask of droll amusement at the hopeless strivings of men and revealed something more sinister, more hatefully despairing. He reached out and held my arm, tightly.