Colin Harrison - Afterburn

"You're not talking," she said.

"I'm worried, heh."

"About what?"

"I had some messages at the hotel I was going to check."

"Important?"

"Not really. Just want to check them."

"Here." She pulled the little phone out of her purse. "You just push the green button and dial."

"Great." He took it from her.

"And I'll go pee. Be right back."

She got up and walked away. He knew from the way she walked that she was thinking about how her butt looked. They all did. They had you coming and going. You chased them and then they caught you. He studied the phone, all of its buttons. The thing was small enough she could slide it up into herself. Phone sex, ha-ha. Man, was he a sly motherfuck! He punched the little green button, heard a dial tone. Then he pushed redial.

"Yeah?" came a man's voice after two rings.

"Where's this?"

"This is the kitchen phone."

Rick nodded. Of course. The place they'd just left. "I'm trying to reach Connie."

"She's not around, she's gone."

"She told me she could be reached there."

"She's busy, she's working. She's not supposed to give this number out."

He didn't say anything.

"Who is this?"

"Nobody," he slurred. "Just a-"

"I said who is this?"

"This is the police," Rick said. "We're going to kill Tony Verducci."

He hung up. Then he punched the green button again and dialed randomly. That would be the redial number in case she tried it. He looked up. She was coming back now, and as she passed by the light over the bar, he saw her clearly. She was almost young, but there were old things on her.

"Thanks." He handed Connie the phone.

"Got through?"

"Perfect."

The drinks and salmon came. He had maybe three or four minutes. Go ahead and knock it back. It wouldn't take long. Some guys coming in a cab, maybe right now. Maybe she'd used the pay phone next to the ladies' room. He ate the salmon. She was looking around, her hand in her bag for a cigarette. Waiting, she was waiting. That was it. Jump off the train.

He stood up.

"Hey," she said. "Where you headed?"

"I can't ride the train."

"What do you mean?"

Heh. Go to the fire door. Excuse me, excuse me, a young couple was moving out of his way, yes, thank you, very civilized, he was almost falling down. "Yes, yes, I know, excuse me. Sorry. Sorry! Please move, what? Hey, fuck you, too." alarm will sound. That was good. Scare everybody. Connie following him. Two guys, too. He pushed the bar, the door swung open, no alarm sounded, and he was outside, the night air hitting him, and he saw-oh so beautiful-three empty cabs speeding up Lafayette to make the light and the two goombahs and Connie were coming out and he saluted the cab nearest him like an officer and caught the handle as the car jerked to a stop and pulled it and saw to his horror it was still locked and he pounded on the window, click-click, yes, pulled it open, jumped in, but not before one of the guys yanked open the door. "Go, go, go!" he hollered to the cabbie. "They wanna kill me." But the cabbie was uncertain and didn't speed up and the goonish guy was jogging alongside, then running alongside, then trying to get in, saying, "You fucking-" which was when Rick finally got two hands on the door handle and yanked it shut like nobody's business, making the guy's hand crunch, fingers waggling inside the door frame, and Rick opened the door, making the hand fall away, and slammed it shut for good and looked back through the rear window to see the guy rolling in the street grabbing his bad hand, with the other guy catching up and, back farther, Connie standing on the sidewalk, arms wrapped around herself in the night air, finally looking like what she was, some chick working for the money, which on this evening meant trying to help two goombahs to find out who the big bearded guy was, the guy who said he knew Tony Verducci, the guy she'd pegged from the first as traveling on a fool's errand.

"Two dozen letters already," Martha Wainwright hissed at Charlie as he stepped into her office. "They're just sailing in from every other lonely woman of child-bearing age who reads your advertisement." He'd slipped away from Teknetrix early, carrying the antique cloisonne bowl for Ellie he'd had sent from Shanghai, walking through the caverns of heat and shadow around Grand Central, trying to avoid the shoeshine men, early-drunk commuters, and sweltering tourists. You could always tell the out-of-towners. They looked like Charlie's father going to Miami Beach in 1965. Cameras and white socks and floppy hats. Lost with a map in their hands. The wife with an ass like a sack of potatoes, bifocals on chains, terrified by the lanky black men loitering about, massaging their jazz-bo chins. The husband trying to snatch a thrill off the newsstand porn. Get out of my way, you respectable people, Charlie'd thought, I'm a married man trying to father a child out of wedlock with a complete stranger. Who? Who would answer such an advertisement? He wanted to read the letters himself, not only to check that Martha didn't weed out the good ones, but also to be sure she didn't messenger them over to his office, where they might be opened by Karen. Who might possibly mention something to someone-someone like Ellie, who'd called his office too many times that day, with nothing to say. Calling, he realized, with no reference to his schedule, simply to make herself feel better about something, so edgy and irritable that she did not remember phoning him an hour before. As if she knew Charlie was up to something. Probably smelled it in his sweat, saw it in the way he rattled the business page over breakfast.

He'd also gone to the trouble of walking the eight blocks to Martha's office because her private investigator, a Mr. Towers, never saw anyone outside the offices of the law firm. He would be the one who poked into the candidates' credit histories and medical files. She'd used him on dozens of insurance and divorce cases, she said, the best in the business.

"There they are," Martha announced as they entered one of the firm's conference rooms, waving her thick arm, "your pile of yearning." The stack included letters, photographs, resumes, even a few videotapes. "Told Ellie yet?"

He ignored her and eased himself into a chair.

"I'm going to leave you alone with your fantasies, Charlie." Martha put her hand on the doorknob. "Please don't make too much of a mess."

"You do this to most of your clients?"

"Most of my clients are trying to avoid trouble."

She pulled the door shut before he could respond, so he opened the file of letters. They were typewritten, handwritten, word-processed. He marked two folders maybe and no. What was he looking for? Intelligence and character, of course. Health and vigor. Something special. It was not necessary to like the woman, he told himself; more important that she be a strong person. He would choose strength over niceness any day. Niceness could go to hell. Nice people lost market share. Strength and intelligence. Give me someone healthy and intelligent and resolute, he thought. And stable, and drug-free. Pretty eyes and good teeth would be a plus. Here was a woman who was a lawyer for the poor. Here was a woman who danced in a ballet company but had recently injured her knee and saw the end of her performance career coming. Another was a counselor for battered children. Another was a lesbian who thought such an arm's-length arrangement would be best for her since she wanted a child but had "issues with men." Didn't everyone born without testicles have issues with men? Here was a woman who owned a dairy farm in upstate New York. Her young husband had been killed when his tractor tipped over, crushing him, she said, and now she had a beautiful piece of land, a dog, nice neighbors, and plenty of time, because she was renting out the acreage to another farmer. She and her husband had been planning to have a child. Charlie put her letter in the maybe folder. What next? A woman who had three children but her husband was terminally ill. Thirty-seven years old. The chance of birth defects was one in three hundred, he knew, too high. He put her letter in the no file. The next letter was from a gay man who asked that Charlie sponsor the man's adoption of a Third World child. "Of course, you may be put off by this request," said the letter. "But my partner and I, both in our late forties, have been together for eleven years. We are both HIV-negative. We are sincere and committed to each other. We are looking for a girl from China, Korea, or Malaysia. Most overseas adoption agencies are wary of gay male couples, and we may have to accept a severely damaged child. But we are willing to do this. We are frankly appalled by the behavior of many gay men, who mock straight people without really contemplating the effort it takes to raise a child. We believe we have the sufficient humility and dedication to do this. Please help."