We sat without speaking for a while.

"He asked me to marry him, Aubrey. I didn't even get a chance to tell you."

"Well," she sighed, "that's Walter. You know one way or another he was gonna leave your a.s.s at the altar."

I laughed once, bitterly. Then I broke down. She let me sob, periodically feeding me Newports and Courvoisier.

And at last the tears stopped. I felt oddly clear headed, light. I got up and washed my face carefully.

"Is that bartender who used to deal still here?" I asked. "The one who used to get you the Demerol?"

"You mean Larry? Yeah. He's on till four. Why you asking?"

"Does he still buy and sell things?"

"What things?"

"Pills. Stuff. Just about anything you can name."

"Yeah, I guess so. But I asked you why you wanna know."

"Because. Like Walter said, I've come to a few decisions. Could you ask him to come in here for a minute? Tell him I need to talk to him."

"Don't do nothing stupid, Nan."

"Please get him."

"Don't do nothing stupid," Aubrey repeated when she walked in again with the brown eyed bartender. "Larry, you remember my friend Nanette, don't you?"

He nodded.

"Hey, Larry, I need a gun," I said.

"No s.h.i.t?"

"No s.h.i.t. Can you get it for me?"

He looked over at Aubrey, who rolled her eyes and walked into the toilet.

"Can you get it?"

"What do you mean-tonight?"

"Why not?"

"What do you need?"

"I just said, Larry, a gun."

"I mean what kind, angel."

"It makes no f.u.c.king difference whatever."

He scratched his head, looking me up and down.

"Larry, let me be honest with you. You're dealing with a novice here. I just need a shooting device that works. Something that will make an impression, something that will threaten and persuade. Something capable of killing a rat, for instance."

"There's a nice .22 long I can lay my hands on right away. Comes with a full clip."

"What's a .22 long?"

"Well, it certainly could take out any rat who tried to f.u.c.k with you."

"Can you show me what to do with it?"

"Sure."

"Is there a cash machine near?"

"On Chambers Street."

"I'll meet you out front at four."

The white shirt felt good against my skin. I wriggled into a pair of Aubrey's snakeskin leotards, stretching them over the ma.s.s that is my b.u.t.t. I put my boots back on and, at her insistence, threw on Aubrey's fur coat. I got a glance at myself in the mirror. My G.o.d, I could have been looking at Tookie Smith! Or I might have been a downtown money bunny off for a long day's shoe buying and gallery hopping.

"Why don't you wait for Jeremy?" Aubrey offered just as I was leaving. "Come home with us. He gonna be here in a minute."

I shook my head. "Tell him about Walter, would you? Just tell him-just say h.e.l.lo from me."

I withdrew five hundred dollars and gave Larry four hundred of it.

Larry lived in a nice loft building on Nineteenth. He came out of the kitchen carrying a mid-sized Dean and De Luca shopping bag. He placed the bag on the floor and removed my gun.

A gun is a singular thing, isn't it? Nothing else in the world even remotely resembles it.

"Long" was right. I was surprised at the size and heft of it. I got a five minute lesson on how to operate my new purchase. Clip. Safety. Barrel. Muzzle. Ammo. Push this up. Pull that back. "This looks like the foreskin on a very angry p.e.n.i.s," I remarked.

"Uh ... right," said Larry.

"Thanks for everything, Larry. I never met you before in my life."

He nodded. "Looks like you dropped a few pounds since the last time I saw you, didn't you?"

"I guess."

"Looks good on you."

"I've got to be running along now, Larry."

"Well, just a second."

"What?"

"You're really not going to do anything stupid, are you?"

"Do I look stupid?"

"Not at all. Listen-How about staying for a drink?"

"It's almost light," I said. "I have to go."

I pushed through the prison grey lobby doors and stepped out onto the deserted street.

It had begun to rain.

CHAPTER 15.

Reflections I made myself a lovely breakfast: poached eggs, sliced oranges and wafer-thin toast without the crusts. Next to my plate lay my big black gun, just north of my coffee cup.

I'd been in the house alone for a couple of days. Aubrey and Jeremy had been wonderfully supportive and loving but I hadn't wanted to see them. Or anybody.

I felt better today though. It was almost noon. I had slept well. The apartment no longer terrified me. It simply was no longer such a big deal that both Sig and Walter had been slaughtered in close proximity to this cute little vintage enamel table, a genuine piece of 1930s Americana, that I'd always loved decorating with my West African dolls and beeswax candles and ecru damask placemats.

Besides, something told me that once the management office got wind of the goings on of the last few weeks, I wasn't going to have the opportunity to grow old here, savoring the memories of the good times had by all in this place. The super hadn't even looked at me while he replaced the window, wordless, lips tight.

I did the dishes and cleaned up the last of the mess from the shoot-out and subsequent ravaging of my home.

Question for the day: Where was Henry Valokus? Not near his old place, was my guess. In other words, nowhere close to where I lived and did my street music number. No, the chances would be too great that he and I would meet in the neighborhood.

He had been nosing around a seedy bar at Ninth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street-hardly the street of dreams, more like rue de Wino-looking for Wild Bill. Looking for that golden sax. Rhode Island Red. It sounded like enough money to take the sting out of tramping around h.e.l.l's Kitchen. Henry might have dedicated his days, and even his nights, to combing the neighborhood in search of Wild Bill, might have hung out in bars no self-respecting h.e.l.l's Angel would have taken a leak in. But I knew that Henry would not live in h.e.l.l's Kitchen. Even if they were auctioning off Bird's jockstrap in the Italian bakery on Fifty-first Street.

Actually, the thought of Henry picking his way up and down the ragged steps of a Tenth Avenue tenement was almost funny. Goodness, where would he have his caffe latte in the morning? Where would he find that Russian leather soap he was so fond of? Where would he get his yellow roses?

So where was Henry living? a.s.suming he was living.

He had said once that as much as he liked the Village, he thought it was too precious. The Upper West Side drove him crazy, he said; everyone was either eighteen or eighty or insane, and the streets were always clogged with people. He got a kick out of prowling Fifty-second Street because it had been the site of so much astonishing, wonderful music, the old Birdland having grown in his imagination to high temple status. But every trace of that era had vanished. At present, the neighborhood was nothing but black gla.s.s corporate high-rises and overpriced eateries and luxe hotels.

Where was he right now? Where was he living while he went on searching for Rhode Island Red? And how much time did I have to find him before he either located the saxophone or gave up and left town?

I got out my New York City map, unfolded it on the table and suspended my hands, palms down, above its surface, as if it were a Ouya board, as if it might suck my finger down to the exact spot where he lived. Of course, he might be in Chinatown, or Morningside Heights, or Queens or Jersey City. But I was banking on his having remained in central Manhattan.

"Henry, you are right ... here." I zoomed in on a section of the map, grabbed a pencil and circled the area.

There wasn't a lot of mystery involved in my selection. I knew he had to be somewhere between Thirty-fourth Street and Seventy-second Street-where he was comfortable, in the heart of the city-shops, food, music, wine, gifts to impress a lady-all within easy reach-transient hotels galore, anonymity.

I put on some Erik Satie, for a change of pace from the Billie songs to commit suicide by, a change from the junk-sick Parker ballads and the post desolation Bill Evans stuff. It's funny how heartbreaking Satie can be, and at the same time soothing, focusing. And then he'll go off on one of those surrealist tangents, where he sounds like a spoiled brat having a tantrum, or the inside of a mad trolley conductor's head. He was one weird looking man, Satie. I think I probably would have had a lot of fun with him.

I moved into the living room and smoked one of Aubrey's horrendous Newports with my second pot of coffee. From where I sat I could see the lethal looking barrel of the gun on the kitchen table. An angry p.e.n.i.s? Poor Larry. Had I really said that to him? I'd have spat on a weaka.s.s, cornball line like that just a few weeks ago.

I had to hurry up and flush Valokus out into the open before it drove me completely crazy.

What would bring him out? What would force him to surface?

Not a great new Indian restaurant. And, alas, not me.

The fabled million dollar sax? Definitely. But that I couldn't deliver.

All morning I'd had an idea brewing for a little fire sale that Henry would not be able to resist. It wasn't Bird's jockstrap or his pickled brain or the last Camel from the pack he bought on the morning of his death.

No, none of those things.

I closed my eyes.

How did Henry, who had an awful lot of free time on his hands, spend his day? Lingering over coffee. Bathing. Lunch. Shopping for new CDs and old records and ... stuff. He went on meandering walks. He went to green markets looking for the freshest fruits. Flower shops. The butcher with the tenderest veal. In fact, one of my many favorite things about Henry was how much time he'd been willing to devote to my comfort: he was constantly in the supermarket shopping for the delicious dinners he was going to make me. I guess to the average man Henry must have appeared pretty f.a.ggy. But G.o.d, did I appreciate his ways.

And now I had to hook into those mundane aspects of his life, kind of pretend to be him. I thought maybe I had a way.

The phone rang, breaking my concentration. I let it go for a long time, trying to decide whether or not to answer. Finally, I picked it up.

It was my mother, checking on my mood. She wanted to show sympathy but didn't want me brooding too much over Walter's death.

Mom didn't know anything like the truth about Walter's death. The cops had managed to keep it out of the papers. And in the version I'd given her, Walter had been an unfortunate bystander in an attempted liquor store hold-up.

After five minutes or so of consolation, she moved on to lighter topics. Guess who she'd run into at the Grand Union, for instance.

I couldn't possibly.

Paula Stratton's mother, of all people.

I gave up, finally, and she had to tell me who Paula Stratton was.

"Paula," she insisted. "Your old friend from high school."

"Oh, right," I said. "Paula."

Who hardly qualified as an "old friend." It was only that Paula, who was white-as most of the kids were at the high school I attended-had been an unfortunate fat girl, not the same kind of outsider as I but with some little sparks of admirable weirdness over and above the poundage. Our bonding during freshman and soph.o.m.ore years had been more defensive than instinctual. We went to plays and concerts and movies together, spent a semester abroad together, because no men were interested in taking us out. By the time Paula and I were seniors, however, she had a marvelous little figure and had lost interest in just about every arcane pursuit the two of us had ever shared.

"Do you want her number?"

"Whose number?"

"Paula's number," Mom repeated patiently. "Her mother says Paula had a pretty bad time of it with that husband of hers, but now she's single again and going to law school and-"