Michael Cunningham - Specimen Days

It took her another moment to see what was on the wall opposite her door. In white chalk, in perfect if slightly labored grade-school cursive, someone had written, TO DIE IS DIFFERENT FROM WHAT ANY ONE SUPPOSES, AND LUCKIER.

Neither Pete nor the FBI boys could offer much. They questioned the neighbors, of course, and of course nobody knew anything, had seen anyone untoward, or etcetera. As every tenant knew, it was semi-challenging but not impossible to get into the labyrinth of alleys and dumping grounds behind the building and slip in through the broken back door. The building’s denizens had recently observed the fifth anniversary of their ongoing attempts to get the landlord to fix it.

Pete stood in Cat’s living room, sweating majestically, sipping the espresso she’d made for him.

“How’s the coffee?” she asked.

“Strong.”

“Only way I know how to make it.”

“I’m frankly at a loss about how this asshole figured out where you live.”

“There are about a dozen ways.”

“Right.”

This was one of the surprises there were no elaborate systems for keeping cops anonymous. That was movie stuff. Matter of fact, the systems that did exist, for the higher-level grunts, didn’t work all that well. Just about anybody with true determination and a computer could track down a cop or an FBI agent or an auditor with the IRS, knock on the door one night, and deliver a lethal message. Only the biggest bosses had protection.

Pete said, “You want one of the guys to stay with you tonight? Or would you rather go to a hotel?”

“I can spend the night at Simon’s.”

“If they’ve got your address here, they may know about him, too.”

“Simon’s building is probably safer than FBI headquarters. Some exiled king lives in one of the penthouses, plus a few very kidnappable CEOs.”

“Have you called him?”

“I was just about to. He should be done with his client by now.”

“Call him. I want to get you settled somewhere.”

She dialed Simon on her cell. She told him the story.

“My God,” he said.

“I am, in fact, a little rattled,” she told him.

“Come right over.”

“I will.”

Pete took her. They left the FBI boys lifting the ten thousand fingerprints from every inch of the premises. Who knew? Maybe they’d come up with something.

Pete walked her into the lobby of Simon’s building on Franklin. He whistled softly over the maple paneling, the silent explosion of pink lilies on the concierge’s desk.

“Fat,” he said under his breath.

She announced herself to Joseph, the supremely capable Korean doorman.

“’Night,” she said to Pete. “Must be nice,” he said.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” she answered curtly. She was in no mood right now.

“Right. See you in the morning.”

Simon was waiting for her upstairs. He held her. She was surprised to realize that she might start weeping, not so much from exhaustion or nerves but from the sheer joy of having someone to go to.

“Unbelievable,” he whispered. “Unbelievable,” she said.

She sat on his sofa, declined his offer of a drink. She loved his apartment, felt appropriately guilty for loving it, but loved it all the same. Four big rooms on the twenty-second floor, twelve-foot ceilings. The people walking the streets below, trying to find the least bruised bananas at the corner market, hoping not to get hit by cabs they had no idea what hovered over them, these oases of granite and ebony, these sanctuaries. The scorched plains rose to alpine peaks, where the wizards lived. Up here it was temple lights and a sequestered, snowy hush.

Simon was a collector. Nineteenth-century maps, Chinese pottery, vintage toys, and music boxes. Cat kept meaning to ask him. Why those particular objects, out of all the things in the world? She hadn’t asked. She preferred the mystery. Simon bought and sold futures. He saw some particular significance in maps, pots, and playthings. She liked it that way. She spent enough time searching for explanations at work.

Simon sat beside her. “What happens now?” he said. She saw the spark in his eyes. He was turned on.

“They’re checking out my building. I don’t expect them to find anything.”

“How can they not find anything?”

“There are thousands of fingerprints in a building like mine. And… Well. It’s time you knew. We’re not really all that good at this. We work very, very hard. But a lot of the time we just end up arresting the wrong person, and that person goes to jail, and everybody feels safer.”

Simon paused, nodding. He seemed unsurprised, or had decided to act unsurprised. He said, “The pay-phone thing is funny, isn’t it? Why not a cell?”

“Cell phones have owners. This is brilliant, in its way. Low-tech is the best way to go. You pump a few coins in, say your piece, and run. We can’t watch every pay phone in the five boroughs. These little fuckers are smart.”

“Do you think you’ll catch him?” Simon asked. “We have to. We can’t screw up something this big.”

“And your role is?”

“To go back to work in the morning and wait for another call.”

“That’s it?”

“For now, yes.”

He was disappointed, naturally. He wanted her careening around in an unmarked car. He wanted her cracking the case, saving the day. It was not sexy or interesting, her waiting by the phone. It was just say it too maternal.

She said, “I was reading Whitman. At the same time some maniac was writing a line from Whitman on the wall outside my door.”

“I’ve never read Whitman,” he said.

Of course you haven’t. You’re Cedar Rapids. You’re Cornell and a Harvard MBA. Your people don’t do poetry. They don’t need to.

Stop.

She said, “Chapman was carrying a copy of Catcher in the Rye when he shot John Lennon.”

“Why do you think the kid would choose Whitman?”

“I’m trying to figure that out.”

“Why did Chapman choose Salinger?”

“Well, I’d say it was to feed his own narcissistic sense of himself as a sensitive loner. He identified with Holden Caulfield. Holden was right, and the rest of the world was wrong. Other people might think it was a bad idea to kill John Lennon, but Chapman thought he knew better.”

“You think your kid feels the same way about Whitman?”

“I don’t know. I’m talking to a Whitman person at NYU tomorrow.”

“You tired?”

“God, yes.”

“Let’s go to bed.”

Cat slipped under the covers while Simon was still in the bathroom, performing his rituals. Simon’s bedroom was the sanctum sanctorum, the vault where the best stash was kept. Along the south wall, shelves offered row upon row of vases and plates and ginger jars, pale green and lunar gray. On the opposite wall a collection of old banks and music boxes looked back across at the pottery. Cast-iron Uncle Sams and horse-drawn fire trucks and dancing bears, carved boxes that still contained the favorite songs of people a hundred years dead. Little toys, behold the perfect serenity of a thousand-year-old jar. Pottery, never forget how much humans have always loved a sentimental song and the sound of a coin put by.

Cat let herself sink into the fat pillows, the zillion-thread-count sheets. Of course she liked it. Why wouldn’t she? She’d gotten here by chance. If she and Simon hadn’t happened to go to Citarella at the same time (they had the best crab cakes; she’d had a craving for crab cakes), if it hadn’t been raining, if they hadn’t hailed the same cab at the same moment…

Just like that. Just that quick and easy. A little banter in the cab’s backseat. (You sell the future? That is heavy shit. You talk to murderers? No, that is heavy shit.) A cup of coffee and that thing he did with his thumbs, hooking them around the cup rim, tapping out a little tattoo. He had pretty thumbs (she was a sucker for men’s hands) and a way of tucking in his lower lip that was what made it happen, initially. Soon after, he proved to be one of those men who cared if a girl had a good time, and she appreciated that. Okay, he was more focused than passionate, his lovemaking had some hint of the deal about it (got to close this one, got to keep the customer satisfied), but still, he was sweet in bed, and she’d thought she could loosen him up, with time. There was his beetle-browed determination to see her come; there was the impossible beauty and sureness of his fat, white propitious life. His collections and his deep leather sofas, his gigantic chrome shower-head. Which had mattered more at first, the thumbs and lips and conscientious sex or the gear?