The Way of All Fish Page 3

  She had agreed and said she’d be there in an hour or a little more. She wasn’t sure how long it would take to get there. He’d told her to take the N train, so she’d walked over to Washington Square.

  She was glad at least that it wasn’t dark, although it was looking pretty dusky. Still, it was only midafternoon, probably a downtime for killers, drug drops, joyriders, carjackers, rapists, kid—

  “Yeah?”

  The single word seemed to explode through the opening of the door, and she was jolted from her fantasy. The heavy door had swung inward with a clatter as if nuts and bolts were falling out of its hinges.

  She took in the flat face of the man, youngish, the ripped jeans, the T-shirt with lightning bolts and knives and other ephemera of death. This did nothing for her confidence.

  When her response was slow in coming, he said it again—“Yeah?”—and looked her up and down, though in an oddly nonsexual way.

  Her hand went to her throat. “Oh, I’m sorry, I must have the wrong—” She was backing off.

  “Hey. You’re the lady called about the fish. I’m Monty. Come on in, come in.” He turned back into the hall and drew his arm in an arc like a discus thrower, gesturing for her to follow.

  Too late now. She followed him down a narrow hall, dully carpeted, dully painted, the surface webbed in fine cracks.

  He went into a room where there were three other men—or boys? they could have been anywhere from eighteen to thirty-eight—all looking glassy-eyed and vaguely smiling from smoking (she guessed) the same thing the fish owner, Monty, was. They, too, wore torn jeans, but less threatening T-shirts. One said “Now You See It.” The other T-shirt sported a smiling alligator.

  The three of them squinted and nodded and smoked, sitting on a couple of dilapidated daybeds. One had wrapped himself in an Indian blanket. The other two roused themselves a little, seeing a stranger, and one of them moved his genitals from one side to another with a look of profound accommodation that had nothing to do with her.

  Monty introduced them: Molloy, Graeme, and Bub. Bub was the one in the blanket.

  They seemed to regard her as just one of the guys, so she stopped thinking murder and rape; yet she felt a little hurt that no one seemed to give a damn that this young blond woman had stepped into a setup that couldn’t have been more conducive to some sexual attack if it had been choreographed by Bob Fosse or whoever did West Side Story.

  Her host had retreated into a darker region and was now back. “Here we go! Here’s your fish. Albino clown fish.” The little fish was in an oversize Ziploc bag. “Cute li’l fucker, ain’t he?”

  “Is it the same as a ghost clown fish?” She caught movement out of the corner of her eye, but nothing there seemed directed at her.

  “You like fish?” One of them, Molloy, had spoken in a dreamy way, through a haze of smoke. Was it a real question? Was it a dream question? His T-shirt was the one with the friendly alligator. He wore a headband with aquaria printed on it in bouncy letters.

  “Yes,” she said to him. Then again to the owner, “But is it a ghost fish?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess.”

  “It does look, well, not quite opaque.”

  They all looked at her with varying degrees of frown.

  “Well, I mean, kind of transparent orange and not quite white.” The ghost, the spirit of a clown fish, or a clown fish slowly leaving. She smiled.

  He held up the bag and squinted as at a too bright sun. “Yeah, yeah.” He didn’t know anything about it.

  Molloy of the alligator T-shirt said, “It’s an albino, yeah, a ghost fish, all right. Albino clown fish.” He spoke with some authority. Cindy wondered if Aquaria was a shop that sold fish and fish tanks and so forth. She wondered if he worked there.

  “See?” Monty brushed his brown hair off his forehead and looked at her out of innocent eyes. He looked six years old.

  That was what seemed familiar to her, what she recognized from childhood: her little brother in an old shed out back with three or four of his friends. It was their club. It could have been them transplanted from the Kansas fields right here and now in Brooklyn. It made her so sad, she was afraid she’d cry if she didn’t get out.

  She opened her bag and brought out the two fifties she’d folded into one of the little pockets inside. “A hundred, right?”

  “A hundred? A hundred for that there little bitty fish? Monty, you cheatin’ this gal?” This came from the one she thought was Graeme. The introductions had been hastily performed.

  Cindy held up her hand. “No. He isn’t. This kind of clown fish sells for even more some places.” She didn’t know whether it did or didn’t. “It’s a fair price.”

  Monty went back to smiling at the money she handed over. He set it on a table with a glass to hold it down, as if the winds were roaming.

  Cindy adjusted her shoulder bag and smiled at them and said good-bye. She held up the bag as if giving the fish its chance to say good-bye.

  They all nodded or grinned through the smoke scrim, held up their hands in a powwow fashion. Indians around a campfire.

  Now she wished she’d brought a lot more, for she had a sudden yearning to enlist their help. If I pay you five hundred, would you go to Manhattan and beat up some people for me? Or even a thousand? I’d really appreciate it.

  They would put their heads together. Yeah, okay. Where we find this dude?

  Dudes. More than one dude. There are lawyers and a literary agent.

  Hell, yeah. They’d high-five all around.

  Then she would tell them how to find them—her lawyer, Wally Hale, and the Mackenzie-Haack counsel and L. Bass Hess—put the five hundred on the table with a glass to keep it down, and leave before the ceiling flew away.

  She did not want to walk to the Thirty-sixth Street station carrying a fish in water. She found a cab on the corner and, on the long drive back to Grub Street, sat in a peaceful frame of mind, wondering about the world Monty and his friends inhabited.

  She sat thinking about them, riding back to Manhattan with the watery bag on her lap.

  5

  There was no one in the outer office of the Hess Literary Agency, so Candy and Karl just walked in unannounced (and uninvited).

  Candy attested to surprise that the outer door wasn’t dead-bolted and security-locked. This was, after all, New York.

  There was a curved desk at the other end of the room for the secretary or receptionist, neither of whom was present. The two long walls held shelves of books—lots of books. Prominently displayed were big photographs, a couple almost poster-sized, the subjects presumably L. Bass Hess’s clients. These big pictures appeared on tiers to the left and right of the door.

  The most prominent was a famous High Desert writer named Creek Dawson, in a ten-gallon hat and neckerchief with a rope slung over his shoulder, a toothpick in his mouth, and a stable full of horses way behind him. He had a lined, weathered face and eyes squeezed tight to blue slits.

  “Ever read him?”

  “Hell, no. I like Louis L’Amour. He lived in a real place. Durango.”

  “This desert ain’t a real place?”

  “It’s California, C. California’s California. Hey, look.” Karl indicated a photo of a dark-haired, youngish man posed with half-shut eyes and one arm wrapped like a scarf about his neck, a pose meant to look smoldering. “Dwight Staines. Remember, the guy was in Pittsburgh same time we were?”

  “Mr. Idiot, yeah. Hess and old Dwight, that sounds like a good match. Pair of pricks.”

  Beside Creek Dawson was affixed a photo of Mia Pennyroyale, wearing gold hoop earrings you could have rolled down Seventh Avenue if you had a stick. She wrote things called romans à clef.

  Then there was a bronzed-god-like guy with the snappy name of Harve Hanks who wrote a series about an L.A. private eye “in the great tradition of Raymond Chandler.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Karl. “Only guy that writes in the great tradition of Raymond Chandler is Raymond Chandler.
”

  Candy snorted. Karl read a lot more, but Candy was catching up.

  Fifth and last was a girl or woman, hard to say, with burnished-to-gold hair that looked like she’d cut it herself, raggedy as it was, and calm gray eyes and an unsmiling mouth. A kind of silent face.

  Candy’s mouth dropped. He punched Karl on the arm, saying, “Christ, K., it’s her, the girl in the Clownfish.”

  “Huh?” Karl leaned closer. “She’s kinda cute.”

  “It’s her, one that started saving the fish. Same girl!”

  Karl was reading the brief text. “Jesus.” He turned to look at Candy. “This is Cindy Sella. This”—he flung his thumb over his shoulder at the photo—“is Cindy Sella, for fuck’s sake!”

  It was then that the receptionist/secretary breezed in from a side door and fitted herself behind her desk. “Oh!” she said. “So sorry. Yes, gentlemen, you’re his three o’clock.” She checked her watch. “You’re twenty minutes early, but I think Mr. Hess can see you.” Her smile was near beatific.

  Karl was about to respond that they weren’t his anything, they didn’t have an appointment, but Candy said to him, “Gift horse. Mouth.”

  “Oh, right.” Karl smiled broadly.

  L. Bass Hess’s receptionist raised a gentle hand, letting them know they needn’t inconvenience themselves with a response. She pressed a button. A staticky reply came through, and she answered, “Mr. Hale and Mr. Reeves are here.” More static.

  Karl saw the nameplate as they passed her desk, which told them she was cutely called Stephie, although she was well into her sixties.

  The office was leather, glass, and books, much the same as the reception room. It was inhabited by a couple of leather sofas face-to-face across another magazine-toting coffee table; a couple of chairs pulled up to Hess’s desk; and the desk itself, holding neat stacks of books and folders and writing tablets.

  And inhabited by Hess himself, a man with insanely red hair that looped and whirled around his head, untamable. His eyes were such a watery light brown that they looked washed away, and his face was haggard and hawklike. He wore a wide-striped shirt and a bow tie, and the jacket hitched on the back of his chair was a dark Donegal tweed that did not go with the tie, the shirt, or the hair. A man of many parts, and none of them fit.

  He stood behind the desk as if he couldn’t bear to waste a minute of his time by sitting down. Instead of greeting them with a handshake and hello, Hess darted a look from Candy to Karl and back. “Who’s Hale and who’s Reeves?”

  Candy and Karl looked at each other, Candy making a gesture that said “you first.” Karl said, “I’m Hale.” Candy said with a wide smile, “That makes me Reeves, then.”

  Hess didn’t wait for confirmation, nor did he invite them to have a seat. He bent over a folder on his desk, slowly fingering its pages. He wet his forefinger to help with this task.

  Candy thought that was kind of cute—that is, for Hess being otherwise a perfect jerk. No manners at all, probably treated everybody but his high-flying clients like scumbags.

  “I’m adding this to the complaint. She should certainly want to settle.”

  Since they had no idea what he was talking about, they simply looked thoughtfully at different fixtures in the room. They shrugged, then muttered versions of “yes,” “maybe,” and “who knows?”

  Candy wondered where the Bass came from. On the wall beside the window that looked out over Broadway, there was a big stuffed fish that could have been a bass. Interesting name, wasted on this guy. And what did the L. stand for?

  “Right. Now, about this complaint—”

  Hess’s eyes narrowed. “Duke Borax told you, didn’t he?”

  Duke Borax. Candy mentally sorted through the names of Joey G-C’s outfit, but he didn’t come up with anybody as insecure as a guy who would call himself Duke.

  “Of course, of course,” said Karl. “Only, you know, Borax, he ain—he isn’t always a stickler for details.”

  “He’s one of the partners at your law firm, for God’s sake. Of course he’s a stickler for details. Just what don’t you understand?” The eyes narrowed to even thinner slits.

  Candy heard the suspicion in his voice and said, “We understand. It’s just that Mr. Hale here likes things straight from the horse’s mouth.” He smiled.

  The horse’s mouth didn’t exactly smile back. It was more of a crumple of the lips, up and down in a wavy line, as if the mouth couldn’t decide on a course of action. It was a Charlie Brown mouth without the Charlie Brown charm. Bass Hess hovered over the file, leaning on it as if it were about to come alive beneath his hands. “Let’s be clear about one thing: I’ve got the papers on her. You should be urging her to settle.”

  As two circles flushed in Hess’s cheeks, Karl said, “Understood.” He reached out for the folder that Hess had clamped to his chest like a mother reluctant to give up her child to the baby minder. Then he unclenched and handed the folder over. “Otherwise, her career will be in ruins.”

  Candy was used to snakes, but the hiss actually made him retreat a step.

  With a few more assurances of confidentiality, they left.

  Just as they set foot outside the Hess Agency door, they glanced down the hall to see the elevator doors open and two guys in suits emerge. The suits looked as if they shopped together to make sure their clothes complemented one another. Both in pinstripes, one gray, one navy, they stood for a moment conferring. The taller and handsomer of the two reminded Candy of somebody, but he couldn’t place him.

  “If that’s the three o’clock appointment, we better hit that exit.” Karl nodded toward the red sign on their side of the elevators. “Hess is going to go bananas. He’ll call security.”

  The two who had just exited the elevator were walking slowly, turned toward each other, hands moving. To Candy they looked, in their synchronized movements, like a couple of tap dancers. Then he realized who the tall one reminded him of: Richard Gere in Chicago.

  They reached the exit before Hale and Reeves (if that was who they were) passed them. It was only four flights, and they were used to running down stairs. They reached the lobby in two minutes flat and left the building.

  6

  Arent-a-cop was on his cell and beginning to move out from around the counter as they exited through the glass doors. He hadn’t seen them. They stopped right in front of a coffee shop two doors down and pretended to be pondering the menu. Candy watched the guard out of the corner of his eye look left and right, then across at the park, probably thinking the two men had made a dash for it through the trees. He went back into the building.

  “What the hell is this shit?” Candy was trying to read what was in the folder as Karl hailed a cab.

  They went back to their East Houston warehouse, where they lived on the second and third levels. The first level was dead space. They wanted it that way. That empty floor was probably worth $2 million, but they didn’t care; they liked the look of a warehouse. They believed in a low profile. And nobody who had a beef with them would be looking for them in Manhattan. Probably thought they were in South America, Venezuela or Guadalajara, or on some island off the map. Not that it made much difference, because anyone with a beef would rather give up the beef than go up against Candy and Karl.

  Anyway, they didn’t want anyone else living in their building. Despite their many superficial differences, they were much alike. They had no families; they bought their clothes in Façonnable; they mourned the passing of The Sopranos (and thought the weird ending heralded a return someday); they ate at good restaurants; they liked women but not too many and not too often; they killed people; they were solid.

  They entered the building on Houston through its thick metal door and took the old cage elevator that ratcheted up to the second level and Candy’s flat. He wanted to check on his fish.

  Karl rolled his eyes as they went in through the bulletproof walnut door to cool white comfort. Except it was getting less and less cool, since Candy had be
en out all morning buying new stuff more “in synch” with a fish’s environment.

  Where before had stood a wooden butler who held out a small tray for keys and cards was now a sculpture of a boy on a shark or whale or dolphin, Karl couldn’t say. Its head was flattened to serve as a tray. Candy had bought it at a secondhand place on Broome.

  There was nice white butter-leather furniture all over and clean glass tables, including a dining table surrounded by Louis Ghost chairs. Now there were shell candlesticks on the handsome white fireplace mantel. On one wall was a hammered metal school of fish, all looking determined.

  Candy said C.F. looked content.

  Karl said he damned well ought to, look at the size of the tank he was hanging out in. “You know, that’s what it mostly does: hang. I never saw any fish just hang there like that one. And that tank’d hold a fuckin’ great white shark.”

  The tank was really big; it took up half a wall. And it was filled with the aquarium stuff Candy had gotten from their friend the night of the café incident. Candy had added what looked like a whole coral reef. “Fish ought to have room to swim in,” said Candy. “And privacy. His own space.” The clown fish had plenty of personal space. Candy had put a structure in the tank that Karl said looked like a W Hotel.

  Karl went to the glass table on wheels where the whiskey and gin and Scotch sat and unstoppered the whiskey.

  Candy sat down with the folder and an omph! as if he’d been on his Bruno Magli–loafered feet all day. He opened the folder again to the first page. “What is this shit, K?”

  Karl was fizzing soda into two glasses. “How should I know?” He carried the drinks over to the fireplace where two leather chairs faced each other and handed one to Candy. He took a swig of his own while looking over Candy’s shoulder. “It’s some legal shit.”