Against Nature Page 7

  “My partner thinks he was murdered,” I said. “She was his girlfriend. Her name is Cassandra. Do you know her?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Has she been here before, with him? She told me—”

  Carl swept the gun up and pushed the barrel of the Luger against my forehead. A twitch of that drunken finger and I’d have a bullet lodged in my brainpan.

  “Carl, please, if you’d let me—”

  “Call her,” he said. “Let me hear it from her.”

  I glanced down at my phone on the bar. “Okay,” I said. “No problem. Could you please lower the gun while I dial?”

  He removed it from my forehead, but kept pointing it at me. I showed him the screen as I opened my CONTACTS and scrolled to her name. “See,” I said. “‘Cass,’ she’s my friend. I can show you our texts too.”

  Carl snatched the phone away with his free hand and put it to his ear. He frowned as he listened. “Straight to voice mail,” he said. “Too bad for you.”

  “She’s upstate,” I said. “There’s no service up there. I’ve been trying to reach her all night.”

  He considered that, tossed my phone back on the bar, and lowered the gun. “She at Victor’s?” he asked.

  “No,” I told him. “It sounds like Victor’s sister, Susie, inherited the house. She threw us off the property earlier today.”

  “You met Susie, eh?”

  “Batshit crazy, that one.”

  “Genau, both of them. He’s the one who jumped off that waterfall.”

  “Cass thinks he was pushed.”

  Carl shook his head. “Pushed himself maybe,” he said.

  “Why would he do that?” I asked. “He was writing about you, isn’t that right?”

  “Genau.”

  “What about?”

  Carl nodded toward the picture behind the bar, the javelin above it. “My old life,” he said. “When I was her.”

  “What else?”

  “What else, he asks. All of it. Those who fed me pills, stuck needles into me when I was young. Made me a big, strong champion.”

  “It’s a horrible story, Carl, but Cass said—”

  “ ‘Horrible’? No, it’s a sad story with a happy end. Uli and I, we made it out. We built a life. We love each other.” He paused, remembering the scene I’d witnessed earlier. “Despite our little arguments, ja? I have not been so good since Victor died.”

  “Cass mentioned there was something more. That the people who abused you are still out there. She thinks maybe you told Victor something that got him killed.”

  “They are still out there, ja, of course,” he said. “No one was punished, not really, a few small fines, slaps on the wrist. When the Wall came down and it all came out, the doctors, the coaches, they left and found new jobs in new countries. They were very smart. There are many opportunities for smart guys in sport, lots of money in improving performance.” He reached for a clean pint glass on a shelf that had been cleared considerably since his arrival. Poured another Bud, swallowed half in a gulp. “As for Victor, I guess it became too much. He fought the depression.”

  “You really think he jumped?”

  “Of course—they say it was suicide.” Another gulp finished off the beer. He turned for another refill. “If they think it was anything else, why would they not look into it?”

  “Because Cass hasn’t told them everything,” I said. “It sounds like Victor was being threatened. It sounds like the two of you were talking about exposing some very powerful people.”

  He smirked down at me, said, “Your partner, Cassandra, she is very beautiful, very sexy, ja? You have a thing for her, don’t you? You’ll do whatever she asks. She says someone killed her boyfriend. She called you, fed you the scent, and sent you out hunting. You are her bird dog.”

  The truth of his assessment, perhaps meant critically, fired me with pride. Who else could she call? Only her faithful Duck . . . I looked down into my empty glass. Carl didn’t need to be asked. He refilled it while I relished his words. I tapped the bar, asked if I could use the men’s room.

  “Why do you need my permission to piss?” he asked.

  I looked toward the Luger, still hanging forgotten in his hand.

  “Bitte,” he said. “I’ll put it away. Do what you must.”

  I climbed off the stool and moved toward the back. After the jolt of adrenalized sobriety, the accumulated booze reasserted itself. My head was a fog of amber and hops and troubled visions. The imprisoned landscape of Kruger’s youth, a well-trained captive stuffed with pills and pricked with needles until he could throw a spear farther than anyone. The thought of Victor Wingate’s final moments in flight over those falls, pushed or not, the terror would be the same. For a few accelerating seconds the fact of death would have rushed through him before impact on the rocks below.

  I locked the door and unzipped and heard Lemmy return at high volume outside. Couldn’t make out the song. Chainsaw guitars and the growling roar of hard-lived lyrics. Cass had spent time here, Carl knew her, a fact she failed to mention. I pictured her seated regal in black at the bar, chatting with Uli, while Carl poured out his life story to her boyfriend. Perhaps they double-dated on trips to the city. The dominatrix and the damaged writer, the strapping German couple of unlikely origin: a fine foursome fit for a Downtown of lost days. Cass had been back and hadn’t even bothered to tell me.

  A bird dog, I thought. Called when needed, when a scent needed sniffing and tracking. Poor dead Elvis and I, two of a kind. I missed the hound. But I felt no submissive shame at that truth. It was the only time life felt worth living: when there was something to chase, secrets to uncover. I washed my hands, accepted my face in the mirror, and unlocked the door. When I stepped out, Carl was no longer behind the bar. I called his name over the metal.

  Then there was a sharp crack of pain at the back of my head. My legs crumpled beneath me. I heard breathing behind me, the clang of a weapon hitting the floor.

  And then it was black.

  Chapter 8

  It was an unpleasant way to wake. Shaken on a dirty barroom floor, blinking at lights and hard voices through the searing pain of concussion. Events flooded back in flashes. Every thought and image brought blasts of nausea and confusion. I was slapped in the face by a large palm and pulled to a seat. Around me a collection of cops came into focus. Another pack was grouped behind the bar, fixated by something on the ground.

  “Wake up,” said one, with another slap to my cheek. “Time to wake up.”

  I was yanked to my feet. My knees buckled. A pair of officers caught me on my way back down. Steadied, found my sea legs, pulled myself from their grasp. “I got it,” I said. “I got it. What the fuck?”

  “Bring him over,” said an un-uniformed one behind the bar.

  He was dressed in a baggy blue suit. Tie loose under a fleshy throat. His haircut was high and tight, military grade all the way, but now his saluting days were behind him. Twenty years and fifty pounds later, with jowls hanging and eyes drooping, he was the detective in charge.

  The two uniforms grabbed my arms and pushed me over. I stumbled behind the bar and looked down. Carl’s bulk was splayed across the narrow back-bar floor around broken glass and pools of blood. His javelin was standing upright, embedded deep in his neck. His mouth hung open; his eyes were wide in final breathless thought. His arms were rigid, his fingers splayed out as if he had beseeched his executioner. The Luger lay by his thigh near a tide of blood. I looked back at Carl’s body, at the spear now driven through his throat. His large pumpkin head was shrunken, drained of blood and life. I looked to the detective, opened my mouth; I failed to find words.

  “Sit him down,” he said to his uniforms.

  They led me around the bar and pushed me down into a chair at the table where the Rastas had enjoyed their peaceful night, before Carl burst in and they’d been wise enough to head out. I remembered being glad to see them go, feeling that smug sense of a night going to plan. It w
as just as I’d hoped; I had a solo audience with the man I wanted to see. Now that man was dead behind his bar, while I was in for some questions that I would not be able to answer.

  The detective came over. He pulled out the chair across from me, sat, and adjusted his too-big blazer. His eyes were bloodshot. His mouth drooped down with his jowls. He crossed his arms. I looked over his shoulder at the first morning light out the window, guessed it to be about six a.m.

  “Hell of a fight you two had,” he said.

  “I didn’t do that.”

  He shrugged as if I was talking about a spilled drink.

  “What’d you say to set him off?” he asked.

  “I . . . We were talking,” I said. “I got up to use the bathroom. When I came out, I got hit. Someone must have hit me on the back of the head.” I raised a hand, felt the swollen lump behind my right ear. Remembered the sound of the weapon clanging away as I crumpled to the ground. “I was knocked out.”

  He nodded in that understanding, keep-going way that signaled it was time to shut my mouth.

  I crossed my arms, waited for his questions.

  He didn’t react, just stood, then nodded to his uniforms. I was pulled up and led out of the bar into a cool Downtown morning. Above the stench of Chinatown you could smell the inventions of spring. The air had the hint of damp promise, the chill no longer to the bone. A few early risers with dogs on leashes were loitering around the pack of police cars. It was too early for a scene, and no one seemed too interested. Nothing to see here, just a former world-class athlete turned bar owner, executed with a javelin shoved through his throat. Just a cursed pseudo private eye caught in the midst of more mayhem. The Post would be thrilled by my return. “Death Darley,” as they dubbed me, back in action, back under the black cloud of tragedy he could never escape. Twenty months prior, in my search for Madeline McKay, I’d given them a nice run of headlines, cover stories that had culminated in the worst of human suffering.

  As I was shoved into the back of a cruiser, I recalled my old friend Roy Perry, “Page Six” reporter and blow-fueled bon vivant. He had witnessed a similar moment of me sliding into the back of a police car, leaving another scene of death and coming scandal. I pictured his wide, wild eyes that filled a bloated face, aged too fast from hard living. I searched the sparse crowd for any signs of press. Roy wasn’t among this dog-walking group of morning gawkers, but I knew I’d be hearing from him soon.

  I was taken to the 5th Precinct on Elizabeth Street in Chinatown. We parked across from a fish delivery truck. When the back door opened, bile bubbled up the back of my throat at the stench. I climbed out, leaned forward, prepared to heave on the sidewalk. The guiding officer took a step away. The nausea passed and then I was being led up the steps to the 5th. The building was a nineteenth-century relic, white stone with long windows and a pair of cast-iron gas lamps on either side of the entrance, lit in green glass. The numbers 1881 were carved above the arched front door, marking the year of construction, back when this neighborhood was filled with Chinese immigrants being denied basic human rights. They were the Muslims of today. The feds did their best to block new arrivals, while denying the rights of those already here. The natural response was a new, underground order: Chinese gangs known as Tongs. They established the opium dens, the gambling parlors, the houses of prostitution, and they kept their own protected when no one else would. The free associations kept tumbling as I was guided inside the station house.

  I was led past a carved oak staircase, under original molding, and pushed into less attractive décor, into a holding cell. I had two roommates at this hour on a quiet weekday morning: one young, one old, both Asian. The kid looked like a low-level dealer, the kind I used to be, crisscrossing the city with a backpack full of weed, maybe some gram bags of blow or molly. The older one looked like a wizened drunk, the kind I might someday be, brain fried with no flame left in his eyes. He sat on a steel bench in careless clothes, his head lolled back against the cement wall, knees splayed out, arms limp at his sides, in a posture that invited any intrusion. He was past the point of caring. Beat him, bend him over, take what you will, there was no more dignity left to steal. He looked at me through dark slits, his expression as impassive as the guest of honor at a wake. At the other end of the cell, the kid was a contrast in life force. He stood as I entered; his body tensed in defense, a fist curled. He had self-conscious style—clean kicks, bright blue jeans, and a black Brooklyn Nets jacket. Long black hair fell around a high-cheekboned face. His look was hard, but his face was smooth, free of scars and the violent lessons that would come if he stayed in his line of presumed work.

  I nodded to the pair, found a separate corner, and sat against the cold wall, trying to piece together what had brought me here. I returned from the mountains to find my front door tagged with hate, so they knew where I lived. I headed down to Kruger’s bar on East Broadway and settled in. Had I been followed? Carl burst in drunk after midnight; fought with wife, Uli; the bar cleared. Carl and I engaged in friendly banter, listened to some Motörhead, and then I set him off.

  There was the volley of violence, thrown glasses, and a pointed pistol, before the moment deescalated and I managed to regain his trust. I learned that Carl knew Cass. She and Victor had visited him at the bar. I learned more about his childhood as an abused, oversized athlete–guinea pig behind the Wall. And then what? That I was Cass’s bird dog, sent out on another scent in the darkness?

  Despite his protestations I didn’t believe that Carl thought Victor jumped off that waterfall any more than Cass did. They were still out there, Carl admitted, the needle-wielding doctors who doped children for the greater good of Olympic glory. They just moved on to new countries. The secrets to enhanced performance were a valuable commodity, worth billions.

  My head ached; my vision kept filling with black discs. It wasn’t my first concussion, nor would it be the first to go untreated. Between the head trauma and the wet brain of whiskey, doctors would predict dire consequence in my later years. Not that I expected to make it that far. I shut my eyes, pressed my hands over my face, willed the echoes to pass.

  It wasn’t long until my name was called and I was summoned out of the cell into an interrogation room. I sat on a folding chair behind a steel desk and was left alone inside the cement room, facing a one-way mirror of smoked glass. It all felt preordained. My choices were irrelevant. What I said, where I went next, none of it came from anything as deluded as free will. The flashes that some called déjà vu, those were just peaks behind a curtain, fleeting reminders that your course was long set before you. And some courses were cursed from the first.

  The detective from the bar came in a few minutes later. Despite the jowls and the bad suit, he was a proud man passing into middle age with life in his eyes. He moved with the air of a man devoted to a calling, a true-blue believer in justice. He approached the desk and extended a hand.

  “I’m Detective Fitzpatrick,” he said as he took the seat across from me. “Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Darley. You must have the worst damn luck of any guy in this city.”

  “You make your own luck,” I said.

  “If that’s true, I’d consider some life changes if I were you.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  “My pleasure.” He smiled at me like he was an old pal with his shit together, just trying to help a wayward buddy. “You ever consider AA?”

  “Fuck off.”

  He held up his hands in mock apology. “Hey, I don’t buy it either. Swearing off everything forever? Sounds like a time bomb to me. I’m just saying, some folks, when they hit it hard all the time, they find a way of landing in troubling spots. As you said, you make your own luck.”

  “Is this an intervention or an interrogation, Detective?”

  “I’m sorry, not my place, you’re right. I’m just trying to figure out how you’ve managed to find yourself, yet again, at the scene of a murder.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

/>   “No one said you did.” He looked over his shoulder, left to right, feigning confusion at my statement. “I’m just curious about your presence there.”

  “Then why was I tossed in a cell? Being treated like a criminal usually means you’re a suspect.”

  Fitzpatrick gave a thin smile, gentle, almost. He leaned forward and set his forearms on the table. “Like I said, your reputation precedes you, Darley. You’re a convicted felon, with documented substance abuse issues. You’ve been a party to—and a victim of—extreme violence in the past. You’ve been diagnosed with PTSD. Hell, I had it too, after I served in the Gulf. It’s no joke. I get it. Sometimes you feel like you’re going to snap, like you want to mow down every smiling face you see. And some guys do. Not everyone makes it out the other side.”

  “So, did I snap last night?” I asked. “Before I hit myself across the back of the head and knocked myself unconscious?”

  “Let’s back up,” said Fitzpatrick, drawing back and crossing his legs. “Why don’t you tell me about your night. You go to that bar often? Know the bartenders?”

  “First time there.”

  “What brought you down there? It’s not too close to home, is it?”

  “I like to discover new places to drink.”

  “Not me,” he said. “I like my locals. Creature of habit, I guess. I’ve got one or two spots out in Bay Ridge near home. Can’t remember the last time I had a beer anywhere else. But, hey, I suppose that’s my loss. I wish I was more curious, like you.”

  A silence settled between us. I tried to maintain eye contact, but a new wave of concussive symptoms swept through and the black discs returned to my vision. I squeezed my eyes shut, rubbed at my temples.

  “You okay there, Darley?”

  “Fine.”

  “Good. Now, can you tell me what brought you to that particular bar last night? Someone tell you about it? You read a review—‘Best Downtown Dive Bar’ or something?”