Colin Harrison - The Havana Room

But wait- they'd left one thing in the living room, with a certain sadistic flourish: a broom, propped casually against the wall. I edged to the window and looked out. My old belongings were strewn twenty yards down the sidewalk, into the gutter. Whatever had carried or bounced into the street proper had been run over many times by the belching delivery trucks that serviced the block.

In the bedroom, on the wall where my bed used to be, red-spray-paint letters looped two feet high: GIVE ME WHAT I WANT. I collapsed to one knee, staggered by my predicament.

"Nobody saw them," came a voice behind me. It was the kindly and ineffectual super. He was holding a handful of envelopes. "Well, they saw it was a couple of guys, that's all."

"White guys? Black guys?"

"Like I said, nobody saw them." He swung his eyes around the bare walls. "I called the police, though who knows when they show up."

He held up the envelopes. "They broke into your mailbox, too. You expecting something?"

I shook my head, dazed by the whole event.

"You, uh-" He studied me with the intent to get to the bottom of the problem. "So you know why they come do this to you? You know who these guys are? The police are going to have a lot of questions." He stared at me meaningfully, in the manner of a man who has already seen far too many things in his time- bodies drained of blood in bathtubs, widows curled stiffly in their beds, kitchens set afire, drunks insensate on the stairs. "I don't know who is in the wrong, don't know if it's them or if it's you. I don't know if you did something to make some peoples mad at you, if they're going to come back, okay?"

"I see what you mean," I said.

"So I brought you your mail, just in case, you know-"

"In case I felt like not being here for a while."

"You got it, yes."

"I'll pay for the door, the window, all that."

He nodded, unmollified, and his voice found his genuine mood: "Why don't you get out, Mr. Wyeth? I mean now. We don't need problems here. This building is full of peaceful people."

"I didn't-"

"The police are coming, Mr. Wyeth. They will have some questions for you."

I took the mail from him, jammed it in my coat pocket, and hit the stairs. Outside, I saw a man holding a picture frame- Timothy in his baseball uniform, bat cocked on his shoulder, a happy grin on his face.

"Give me that," I said. "That's my son."

"Fuck you, Slim."

"This is all my stuff!" I hollered.

"Not no more."

"Give me the picture."

He started to rip apart the frame and I picked up what used to be the leg of my kitchen table. "You can have all this stuff," I announced, sweeping my hands at the clothes and shoes and kitchen chairs, all of it. "Just let me have the picture of my son!"

"Put down the stick."

"No," I said.

"I'm not giving you the fucking-"

Dead Herschel on a tractor, the mysterious Jay Rainey, the disturbing nocturnal activities of Allison- I swung the table leg in frustration at all of them, catching the man in the shoulder. He howled in fury.

"I'm kill you, you fuck!"

"No you're not!" I snarled, foolish beyond any past history of myself. "I'm going to hit you until you give me that picture, okay? Ready?" I swung the table leg like a bat. "Right in the head, ready?"

He flung the photo to the ground, cracking the glass. I snatched it up. I wanted to poke through the trash for my checkbook or more photos of Timothy, but a police car turned the corner of the block. I slipped down the street, not much more than a vagrant now, hunted and alone.

I was a block from the Harvard Club, on my way to lunch in a new shirt, when I figured out who to call. Martha Hallock.

"Not you again?" she said. "The Grand Inquisitor?"

"Jay's in real trouble, Martha. I'm trying to help him."

"This I doubt."

"He's got people breathing down his neck, Martha, and I can't reach him." I tried to drain the fury and fear out of my voice. "You had something to do with the deal, didn't you? These people are putting a lot of pressure on him now. And me. We need to-"

"I'm afraid you're on your own."

"Thank you," I said, adding, "you fucking old witch."

There was no response, just a series of wheezy, shallow breaths. Finally Martha's voice returned, no longer defiant, but rather somehow burdened. "How much trouble is he in?"

"A lot," I said. "And I don't even know where he is."

"Well, neither do I."

"But you could tell me what I'm dealing with here."

"I could-"

"But?"

"— but I don't have my broomstick."

"Broomstick?"

"Yes, the fucking old witch wants to come talk to the rude Manhattan lawyer but doesn't have a broomstick. However, the fucking old witch could take the 10 a.m. bus into the city tomorrow, I guess."

"The rude Manhattan lawyer would be honored."

"The old witch is fat and unstable on her feet," Martha continued, "and will need assistance."

"Not to worry. Would she like a nice meal as well?"

"Oh, yes."

"How about lunch in a great old steakhouse?"

"Swell beans, as we used to say when I was young, back in the seventeenth century."

"I guess witches live a long time."

"Too long, Mr. Wyeth, that's the problem." She hung up.

Now I stood outside the Harvard Club, not quite able to step inside. A cold Manhattan rain, the kind that promises you nothing but misery, blew in sheets across the avenue, smattering the building. I saw Dan Tuthill waiting for me in the anteroom near the coat check, rocking on his heels, inspecting the cuffs of his shirt, and impossibly, looking a little fatter than two days before. I stepped inside and he shook my hand. We headed straight to the dining room, where we were shown to a table. After we ordered, I asked, "How's Mindy?"

"She's fine. I mean, you know how it was with me…" Dan sighed. "Things are, well, we've got the kids, I always say."

"How's the lawyerly life then?"

"The usual. Pimps and maggots."

"Which are you?"

"I go back and forth- as necessary."

"What about Kirmer, my old pal?"

His smile dropped. "Kirmer? He's running the place, Bill."

"What about-?"

"All those guys? Nah, gone. He mowed down every one of them. Tied them up with phone wire and threw them in the river." He smiled. "Everything's different, Bill, the secretaries, the ways things are organized. I feel like a dinosaur and I'm forty-four!" He smiled up at the waiter. "Scotch on the rocks, double." He looked back at me. "And I don't like the way the wind is blowing. You have to have a thousand attorneys on staff these days to compete! The business is so global, so complex. All these Indian kids who passed the bar in New York and Bombay and have a master's degree in computer systems or bioengineering. They're actually smarter than you or me, Bill, that's the honest fucking truth. So the firm is going to go in directions that a lot of the old guys can't go."

"But you're set, right?"

"They have to buy me out if I leave, everything, even buy my shoes." We sat there, Dan paddling his soup with his spoon to make the steam rise. "Heard you weren't doing much," he said softly.

"Me?" I said. "No."

"Not even a little work?"

"A little. But very little."

"You into something else?"

I shook my head.

"What they did to you was fucking criminal, Bill."

I shrugged. "They had good lawyers."

"Yeah." Dan leaned closer. "So, listen," he said, "I'm going to tell Kirmer to take his hand out of my ass."

"Leave?"

"Leave? Eject, pal. Let those fuckers rot in their own gravy. I got some bucks set aside, I got my partnership share coming to me, and I've got Mindy's father."

"I don't get it."

Dan sat back and rubbed his chest, which meant, I remembered, that he had a story to tell. "Well, you know I'm a bad guy, I slink around."