Russell Andrews: Icarus

She checked her watch. It was five-fourteen. Any second now Gerald Aarons, one of her three bosses – the most important of the three, he really ran the place – would come out of his office, glance at her, mumble something nearly incoherent, and head toward the elevator. He did it every day, unless he had an important meeting, leaving right at a quarter after five so he could make the five forty-five train to Westport. The minute hand on Joanie's watch moved and… Yup. Right on time. Gerald's door was opening, he was stepping into the outer office, and there it was – the glance, something that sounded vaguely like "gnightseeya," and then he was down the hall and gone. It didn't take long for the rest of the office doors to open and shut. Soon the hallway was filled with three-piece suits rushing by. Most of the lawyers were gone by five-thirty since almost all of them had commutes and families waiting for them, too. The ones who didn't left just as early. They had martinis or stewardesses or poker games waiting for them.

Okay, enough worrying about Jack, Joanie thought. It was ridiculous. There was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. He'd come, she'd tell him, he'd be thrilled. No problem. So just get back to work, she told herself. How often does this happen? You've got half an hour, free and clear, to really clean up your desk. No one's going to bother you now. There's no one left to bother you.

With a little shake of her head, Joanie realized it paid to be a lawyer instead of a paralegal. It was five thirty-one and the place was already deserted.

Unbelievable, she thought. One minute after quitting time.

Empty.

Just one meager minute and she was all alone in the office.

– "-"-"REGGIE IVERS WAS certain that people were staring at him and he hated that. Really hated that. It made him crazy.

Walking quickly down Forty-second Street – no one was walking as fast as he was, he was passing them by like they weren't even moving – Reggie giggled. So what if they were looking? It couldn't really make him crazy. He wasn't crazy. That's what the doctors had told him. Maybe he'd been crazy. But not anymore.

He'd never felt crazy, Reggie thought. But he must have been. At least, if he'd really done what everyone said he'd done. You'd have to be crazy to do that. To go up to a complete stranger on the street and hurt her like that. When he heard the details, he actually got sick. Look, he said to the lawyers, I couldn't have done it. It made me sick to my stomach just hearing about it. But the lawyers insisted he did do it and everyone else seemed to agree.

Christ.

He could never have done such a thing. Pick up an empty beer bottle on the street? That alone, with all the germs, was disgusting enough. Really. He would never do that, much less the other stuff. Much less hold the bottle in his hand and break it, smash it so it was all jagged and sharp and deadly. And then go up to a stranger in the street, a total stranger, and… and…

He couldn't even think about it. It was too awful. Too sick.

Too crazy.

She needed three hundred stitches, they said in court. And she lost an eye.

How could he have done such a thing?

He couldn't, that's how.

It was all the lawyers' fault. They made everyone believe he was guilty. No, not that, worse than guilty. Crazy. His own lawyer! Telling the whole world he was as cuckoo as a loon! And then smiling afterward, telling him how happy he should be because they weren't putting him in prison, they were putting him in a place for loons. A special hospital for nut jobs.

God, he hated fucking lawyers. Hated them the whole time he was in the loony bin. Seven years of hate. And getting out hadn't changed anything. It had been thirty days since they told him he wasn't crazy anymore. Thirty days since he'd been back on the streets. He'd hated them every one of those days, too. Every single minute of every single day for thirty days…

Reggie Ivers realized he'd stopped walking.

He must have walked really fast because it was pretty chilly and even though he wasn't wearing a jacket he was sweating. But why did he stop? Where was he?

Reggie looked up at the numbers over the front of the tall building on the corner: 527 East Forty-second Street. Why did that sound familiar? Why did he know that address?

He heard the sound of paper rustling and he looked down, realized there was paper in his hand. Yellow paper. He smoothed it out, saw it was from a phone book. Oh, yeah. He'd been looking in a phone book, he remembered that now. But why? What was he looking for?

Now he remembered that, too.

He was looking for lawyers. Lying, cheating, cocksucking lawyers.

Reggie stared at the ripped-out yellow page, saw that he'd circled the name of a. lawyer at the top of the page. The first lawyer in the phone book. It was the name of a firm.

Aarons, Reuss and Seaver.

And look at this. Look at their address: 527 East Forty-second Street. Right where he was.

Son of a bitch, Reggie Ivers thought. What a coincidence.

And you'd have to be crazy not to believe in coincidences.

– "-"-"DOM BERTONLINI WALKED with Jack into the lobby of the building on First Avenue and Forty-second Street.

"You know what floor she's on, right?"

"Seventeen. Aren't you comin' up?"

"No," Dom said. As usual, he spoke in a raspy growl and he knew it sounded harsher than he wanted it to. "I think she wants to talk to you herself. I'll be up in a little while."

"What's goin' on?" Jack asked. "What's the big secret?"

"You'll just have to ask her," Dom said. And then, with his good hand, he brushed Jack's hair back off his forehead. "We can talk about it at the game, Jackie, just you and me. But now I'm gonna take a little stroll around the block. And then I'll come up and see how you guys are doin'."

"Do you have to call me Jackie?"

Dom nodded. "It's what I've always called you."

"Grown-ups are weird," Jack said.

"You have no idea," Dom told him. "I'll see ya on seventeen."

He waited as Jack went up to the security guard, signed himself in, then stepped into the elevator. Dom watched the elevator door close before releasing the breath he'd been holding inside. Then he went back to the revolving door, pushed and stepped through, back to the sidewalk. He noticed the tall, skinny guy in the T-shirt coming across the street, heading right toward him, but he didn't really pay attention. He watched the guy go through the revolving door and into the building but all Dom thought was "Geez, he's walkin' fast." Then he shrugged and went for his stroll around the block.

– "-"-"REGGIE WISHED HE wasn't sweating so much when he went up to the guard at the front desk.

"What floor are the lawyers on?" he asked.

The guard smiled at him, not a friendly smile, more like you're-a-dumbshit smile, and said, "We got a lot of lawyers in this building. Which ones you want?"

Reggie held the yellow paper up so the guard could see it.

"Aarons, huh?" the guard said. "They're on seventeen but I think everyone's pretty much gone. You got a name? I can call up and see if he's still there."

When Reggie didn't answer, the guard repeated, "You got a name, pal? Or are you just droppin' somethin' off?"

"Droppin' off," Reggie said. "Droppin' somethin' off."

"Why don't you just leave it with me?" the guard told him. "I'll give it to 'em in the morning."

"Okay," Reggie said.

The guard waited but Reggie didn't move. "I don't see no package," he said. "You got somethin' or don't you?"

"I got somethin'," Reggie told him.

"Well, where is it?"

"Right here," Reggie said. And he pulled out the knife he'd been carrying in his back pocket, the one that folded, that he'd bought on the street a few days ago, and without another word he stabbed the guard in the heart, three, four, five, six, seven times, until he stopped moaning or moving or breathing. Reggie dragged the guard's body behind the lobby desk so no one would see it. Then he went to the elevator and pressed the up button.