Small Vices

I walked through the park to the art museum and then up Fifth to Ninety-seventh Street and across to the East Side. The address was next to a Spanish grocery store. On the second floor. The door had a pebbled glass window and on it was lettered "Morris Gold, Attorney at Law." The lettering was in gold with a black outline. I went in. The room was barely big enough for a big old gray metal desk and a large swivel chair. Behind the desk was a short very fat man. He wore glasses and a powder blue sport coat, and a dark blue shirt that was too tight around his neck to button. His white tie was narrow and loose and hung crookedly as if he hadn't tied it right. The wider part was shorter than the narrow part. His hair was artificially dark and he wore it long in the back and swooped it up over a large bald spot. On the desk was a computer and a telephone. On the left wall was a file cabinet that matched the desk. Behind him was a window with a crack in it. The overhead light was on. He was reading the Daily News, the paper open flat on the desk in front of him. As I came in he licked his thumb, turned a page, looked at it briefly, then looked up at

"Whaddya need," he said.

"Morris Gold?"

"Yeah."

"I have some work for Rugar," I said.

"Don't tell me what it is," Gold said.

I nodded.

"Who are you?" he said.

I shook my head.

"Who sent you to me?"

I shook my head again.

Gold nodded, and turned and picked up the phone and dialed.

"Guy wants to see you," Gold said. He was silent.

Then he said, "Big guy, beard, wears his hair long, over the ears. Black Oakley shades. Wearing a blue blazer, a white tee-shirt, chinos, and white ru

He listened again.

Then he said, "Okay," and hung up.

"You from around here?" he said.

I didn't answer. Gold nodded with approval, as if he admired reticence.

"You got a phone you can be reached at?" he said.

I gave him Patricia Utley's number.

"Ask for Mr. Vance," I said.

"Okay, somebody will call you at this number at"-he looked at his watch-"two P.M. You got that?"

"Yes."

"You got any questions?"

"No."

"Hasta la vista," Gold said and began to read his newspaper again.

I left without saying anything else. I walked the forty-five blocks back to the hotel. I took off the blue blazer, and the tee-shirt, got a black mock turtleneck shirt and a gray silk tweed sport coat out of the closet and put them on. I took off the chinos and put on a pair of jeans. I left the black Oakleys on the bureau and put on a pair of horn-rimmed Ray Bans. I went into the bathroom and got some hair spray that I'd brought for the purpose, and drenched my hair with it. I combed my hair straight back, being careful to tuck it behind my ears. Then I headed back to Patricia Utley's house and got there at a quarter to two. Steven put me in the library next to a phone, and left me alone. At three minutes past two, it rang.

The voice said, "Mr. Vance."

It was the same voice, deep, flat, disinterested with an internal vibration as if a vast and infernal machine were generating something deep below the surface.

"Yeah."

"Wear what you were wearing this morning. Carry a paperback copy of Hamlet, and stand by the entrance to NBC studios at three-fifteen."

"Okay."

He hung up the phone. I took out the.357 and checked it and put it back. Normally I left the chamber under the hammer empty. This time I had all six rounds in the cylinder. I knew it was loaded. I had reloaded it carefully an hour ago in my hotel room. It was just sort of a practice swing before going to bat. Ritual. I put the gun back and left the strap unsnapped. I made sure my coat was unbuttoned and made a couple of practice draws. Everything was just like it always was. The holster was old and broken in. I'd pulled a gun-often in practice and sometimes for real-enough so that it was as automatic as checking my watch. I did it again. A couple of practice swings. Then I left Patricia Utley's library and went to the front door. Steven was there to let me out. On the front step I turned and put out my hand. Steven took it and we shook.

I went down the steps, turned right, walked the block and a half to Fifth Avenue, crossed to the park, and walked down Fifth Avenue on the park side toward Rockefeller Center. I got there at twenty of three, walked past the skating rink and the statue of Atlas and went into Thirty Rock from the Fifth Avenue side. It was eight minutes to three… I waited behind my Ray Bans just inside the door while my pupils dilated in the diminished light. I didn't see the Gray Man, but I would, and I'd see him before he saw me. He'd be looking for a guy wearing a blue blazer with his hair hanging over his ears. When he'd last seen me I was clean shaven with a crew cut. Now I had a beard and a Pat Riley slick back. He'd only seen me two or three times in his life. And the last time was nearly a year ago. He didn't expect to see me. He thought I was dead… I walked slowly along the lobby toward the NBC studios. There was a steady movement of people in both directions through the lobby. I didn't see them. Everything I had was focused on the Gray Man. He was not at the studio entrance in the pass-through in the middle of the lobby. I kept on going along the lobby, circled it slowly, came back past the studio entrance on the other side of the pass-through. It was 3:15. The foot traffic through the lobby was steady, enough to swell a progress, but no more than that. I had time to look at everybody. And I did, without seeing them. He was the only one I'd see. The rest were so peripheral as to be without meaning, blurred by their inconsequentiality. Amorphous. Their footfalls must have made sound in the black marble space, but I heard nothing, the procession of passersby was spectral and the space through which I walked was soundless and narrow… I circled slowly through the inessential lobby, through the ethereal silent crowd, and he was standing by the shop window across from the passthrough appearing to look at nothing. His gray raincoat was unbuttoned over a gray turtleneck shirt and dark gray slacks. His shoes were black suede with thick gray rubber soles. His thick gray hair swept back smoothly from his face as if it had never been otherwise. He was clean shaven. His skin was still sallow. And deep lines ran from the flare of his nostrils to the corners of his mouth. He still had his earring. His hands were strong and thick and long fingered. His nails were manicured and buffed. He hadn't changed since he'd almost killed me. His face was without expression. His bearing without affect. He was completely still as he waited, looking for a guy carrying a book by William Shakespeare… I looked at him for a while, feeling nothing. Things never stirred the feelings that you have invested in them. Rugar was merely a man in a gray coat looking blankly at the people walking past… I walked past him too, and when I was close I turned and hit him in the face with my left hand and then my right. If you've been a fighter, you have learned how to hit. You know about shortening your arm extension and getting mostly body into the punch. The two punches were good ones. They rocked him back against the black marble wall. His head banged against it. His hand went inside his coat. I pressed my body hard against him, trapping his hand between his stomach and mine. I put my gun up under his chin and pressed the muzzle hard into the soft tissue under the point where his jaw hinged on the right side. With my left hand I got a handful of his hair and banged his head back against the marble wall again. My face was an inch from his. I could see his eyes refocus and the intelligence begin to work in them. He knew me. It hadn't taken him ten seconds to understand what was up. I wanted to keep banging his head. I wanted to bang it until it split open and his life seeped out. But I didn't. It wouldn't get Ellis Alves out of jail. I got the genie far enough back into the bottle to do what I had set out to do more than a year ago. I held him against the wall while I got my breathing under enough control to speak. Around me I was vaguely aware of a lot of scuttling and movement.