Читать книгу Dancing With Shadows - Lynne Pemberton - Страница 6

After Cheri left, Jay slept like a baby. He slept like he hadn’t slept for more than twenty-five years, and when he eventually awoke he felt different. He wasn’t sure in what way, but he felt a definite change. As he lay in bed very still, chain-smoking and deep in thought, his eyes roamed the luxurious room. He felt cosseted, cocooned, safe; yet strangely detached.

Eventually he rose and, naked, he padded to the window. Yesterday the world outside had seemed scary; today it looked a little less daunting. It was raining hard, slanting off the black umbrellas that moved like a swarm of insects seven floors below. A stretch limo, dark and sleek, pulled into the kerb – a fountain of water spraying the sidewalk. Transfixed, Jay watched the scene which was all in black and white like a silent movie playing in slow motion. He considered the years ahead. If he was lucky he had twenty good years left. He was almost forty-six, looked younger; at a pinch he could pass for forty. At least prison life had kept him fit: regular exercise; balanced diet; no alcohol and only the occasional foray into drugs. His intellect had been his salvation; his writing cathartic, as well as lucrative. As he thought about his future, his dreams surfaced – and he’d had plenty: fodder for the imagination; dreams of such glorious extravagance. Los Angeles, producing movies in the Californian sun. Beaches, beautiful babes, great sex. And love. Love with a wonderful woman; an intelligent, sensitive soul mate – his wife. He’d even invented his ideal mate, an enduring fantasy that had for many years inhabited his imagination; as real to him as a living person. Her name was Colette, she was petite with a cute, slightly retroussé nose and full mouth. Her hair was the colour of old gold and it fell in soft waves to an inch below her ears. And they had a daughter who looked like him, dark haired with her mother’s cobalt blue eyes. They laughed a lot, the three of them, and loved. Oh how they loved; hugs, kisses, stroking, bathing together, picnics, walking hand in hand, always tactile, very touchy feely. And every morning he awoke covered in white cotton, in their duplex apartment overlooking the sea, with Colette’s toasty body slotted neatly beside his, the faint scent of her musky perfume awakening his senses. The scenario always ended the same way with Colette telling him he was going to be a daddy again, and the three of them celebrating the good news. The prison shrink, Doc Kramer, had confirmed what Jay already knew. His fertile imagination, aspirational dreams and erotic fantasies were normal and important. They would keep him psychologically balanced. You mean keep me from going stir crazy in this fucking zoo, Jay commented. Simon Kramer had laughed, a deep mellow sound that had warmed Jay’s heart. From that moment, the two men had struck up a rapport and they had talked about anything and everything except psychology, literature, commerce, politics and chess. It was unusual for Simon Kramer to enjoy the company of his patients, but then he recognized that Jay Kaminsky was an unusual inmate. The day before Dr Kramer had retired he’d shaken Jay’s hand and patted him on the shoulder. It was the first time Jay had been touched with affection for six years, and he’d felt tight-chested and close to tears. Kramer went on to say it was a pleasure to have met him, and that unlike most convicted felons Jay had the strength of character and the will to survive a long-term sentence.

The sound of the telephone interrupted his introspection, and made him jump. For the last few months he’d been nervous, strung out. Jay knew he was paranoid about life on the outside, unknown territory changed beyond recognition since he’d been imprisoned. Would he lose his marbles like so many ex-cons did, and end up drinking himself into oblivion? The day before yesterday when the prison doors had slammed shut behind him, he’d panicked. Learning to live independently again after twenty-five years was going to be no picnic; it was a mind-blowing prospect, and he was more scared than he’d thought. As he picked up the phone, Jay realized it was going to take much longer than he’d anticipated to re-enter the human race. Even the simple task of learning how to use a digital telephone made him grimace.

It was Hooper. ‘How did you get on with Cheri?’

‘She was great, Ed, just what I needed.’

‘What did I tell you! Cheri’s a good girl, she really goes, gives great head. I’ve known her since she started out at seventeen. Wow, then she had an ass …’

Jay interrupted, ‘Like I said she was great.’ He sighed. ‘I’d forgotten how good it feels to be inside a woman.’

Ed guffawed. ‘You and me both, buddy.’ Then without waiting for a reply, he continued, ‘Lunch is on for tomorrow, the vice president of Maxmark Productions wants to meet you. They’re pitching for the movie rights on Killing Time. This is big-time Hollywood, pal.’

‘That’s great news, Ed! I’m on; where and when?’

‘Indochine, Lafayette Street, take a cab, be there for twelve-thirty. Your publisher, Bob Horvitz, is coming too. Says he’s dying to meet you in person at last. Bob is one of those dudes who likes to eat the same way he talks, fast. I’m warning you he doesn’t even draw breath, let him have his head and leave me to do the negotiations.’

Jay said, ‘So who needs me?’

‘Bob’s keen to hang on to you for Schnieder and Smith and to get the next book in the bag. I’ve told him what a great guy you are. The personal touch always helps.’

‘Spare me the bullshit, Ed. I’m a convicted felon who’s spent the last twenty-five years in the pen on a second degree murder charge. What’s with the nice guy routine? He likes the way I write, period. Schnieder and Smith have made big bucks outta Will Hope, but I sure as hell know that Bob Horvitz couldn’t give a damn about what sort of guy I am.’

‘You’re way too touchy, Jay, still over-sensitive. It’s gonna take time; you’re on a learning curve, man, you’ve gotta lighten up.’

‘Yeah yeah; I hear you. Don’t worry I’ll do what I’m told. I’ll wear the nice new Brooks Brothers shirt and tie. Eat food I can’t pronounce, listen to the suit and make the right noises in the right places.’

‘That’s my boy; see you at twelve-thirty sharp.’

Jay replaced the telephone, walked to the mini bar and, marvelling at the selection of drinks and confectionery in the small fridge, he took out a beer. He returned to the bed, and using the remote control spent twenty enjoyable minutes surfing the channels. He was about to switch off when he saw her. Like a bolt of lightning her face shot on to the screen. He jumped up, running towards the TV to get a closer look and dropping to his knees. It was Kelly, he was certain, he would recognize her anywhere. In fact she hadn’t changed much in all the intervening years. A little fuller around the middle, but the same twinkling-eyed wide smile – a tantalizing mixture of warmth and mischief. The kind of smile that turns heads, melts knees and knots guts. He felt his own insides respond now, bunched in a hard ball.

Kelly was standing next to Senator Todd Prescott, the man tipped to be the next Republican president. Jay knelt rigid, mesmerized. He couldn’t hear what they were saying for the loud buzzing in his ears. Then Kelly was gone, replaced by the newscaster’s face. Kelly Tyler, Kelly Tyler, he repeated her name in his head. She’d been the girl of his dreams, the one who’d broken his heart, his first love. His thoughts sped back down the years, back to the fall of 1972. It was after a summer of the Eagles and Santana. He’d been invited to spend the day at Susie Faber’s house. He remembered that day as if it were yesterday. It had started out warm, had got more so, and by midday was perfect. He’d picked Kelly up in his beat-up Wrangler jeep. And on the way home, later, much later that evening, they’d made love on the back seat. He would never forget the way she’d looked that day. Her long dress, flowing to her ankles, the curve of her body clearly silhouetted by the sunlight through the diaphanous fabric. When he’d commented on it, she’d told him it was only cheesecloth. Fooling around, someone had put flowers in her hair, and he remembered carefully picking them out by the petals and saying something gauche about her smelling sweeter than any flower. He’d been nervous, fumbling, inept; she’d been the opposite – calm and self-assured, and guiding. He’d taken her for an accomplished lover. He was wrong; it was her first time. Yet making love, she explained afterwards, felt as natural to her as walking, eating or sleeping. She’d helped him unhook her bra and giggled when he’d been all fingers and thumbs with the buttons of his jeans. He’d never forgotten how ashamed he’d felt about his performance; even now he recalled his stumbling apologies and repeated reassurances that it had nothing to do with her.

Kelly had merely smiled in an enigmatic way and reminded him that everyone said the first time was often a disappointment, so it could only get better. She was right; their love-making had improved to the point of glory. Torrid romps in his jeep; outside in some remote spot; or in her room on campus; whenever they could steal a little time together … It always felt, for him at least, totally complete, and something he wanted to repeat again and again.

In the space of four months his love had blossomed to a point where he cherished her, desired her, wanted to possess her, to make her his wife.

That was how Jay had felt about Kelly Tyler, and how he’d believed she felt about him. Until Matthew’s death. It was then that Kelly changed. For as long as he lived he would never forget the indifferent voice of the judge passing sentence. The noise in the courtroom had faded to a dull drone, then pin-drop silence. A crushing pain in his head had followed, as if his skull was in a vice, the cool steel getting colder and colder as it clamped tighter and tighter against his temples. Kelly had stood in the aisle staring at him, her face framed by a waterfall of golden hair. Slightly parted lips, tears falling from big luminous eyes the colour of burnt almonds. To him she had never looked so beautiful as she had in that moment, the last time he’d seen her. Then her features, except for those eyes, had become fuzzy, and textured, like those in an old photograph.

In the first few years of captivity, it had been impossible to put Kelly out of his mind however hard he tried. A deep sense of betrayal had nagged his senses like a persistent dog with a bone. She never came to see him, nor did she write, not a single word. Every week for months he’d flicked through his mail, searching, longing, for a glimpse of her handwriting. Eventually, just staying alive, staying sane, came to demand all his wits and helped crowd out the memory of her. But the hunger to see her face, touch her soft skin just one more time, had never abated. And now, seeing her on screen had brought her back to life, renewing that hunger deep in his belly. It was like the ache that used to keep him awake as a young boy whenever he’d dared to answer his father back. In those days he would receive a beating and be sent to bed without food until forced to apologize.

‘I’m going to find out who killed Matthew and why, and then I’m going to write about it.’ Jay wasn’t shouting, yet his voice sounded too loud in his own ears. A title sprang instantly to mind.

Remission. He liked the sound of it, it had a good ring. He repeated it again and again. ‘Remission, Remission, Remission.’

He began to pace the void between the bed and the wall, a habit he’d developed in prison. It had helped him to shut out the noise of the zoo all around, and enabled him to concentrate. With a sense of dread, he acknowledged that to find out what had really happened on that awful night, he would have to go back to when it had all started.

For years he’d vowed he wouldn’t take that path, sworn he would go forward, opening only the doors that led ahead. But stronger still was his primeval urge for vengeance. Revenge was normally another luxury that prison squeezed out of you. Yet here he was, only hours on the outside and ready to hatch plots, schemes of retribution and pay-back. But it wasn’t just about revenge, Jay knew that. It was about knowing, finding out, making all the pieces fit.

During his imprisonment, his vengeful schemes had been the one thing that fed his fervent intellect – until the early eighties when Al Colacello had come into his life and his writing had begun. A vision of Al, the first time Jay had seen him, crossed his mind. That face would always live with him. A big cat face, sleek and malevolent. With eyes so dark, they were almost black; so shiny, they were almost inhuman. Al had eyes that stripped you naked in seconds, read your mind. And they had looked into the faces of more than twenty-eight men before he’d killed them. All hits, good clean eliminations. ‘The best cleaner in the business.’ That was how Al had referred to himself.

Al had boasted to Jay that he was so good he’d earned himself the nickname ‘Teach ‘n’ Reach’, or just ‘Teach’; there was nobody whom he couldn’t teach a lesson, nobody he couldn’t reach. Al Colacello had been Mario Petroni’s lieutenant for twelve years, and his best friend. Mario was known as the ‘Dapper Don’ after he’d been indicted on three charges of corruption and grand larceny and had appeared every day at his hearing immaculate in hand-stitched Savile Row suits, Hermès ties and cashmere overcoats. Al had been a key witness in his defence, his testimony crucial to Mario’s subsequent acquittal. Al and Mario: both born on the same day, within hours of each other, in the mean backstreets. Al in Naples; Mario in Sicily. Both emigrated to America in the late fifties; Al with his family, and Mario to stay with his uncle. Somehow innocence managed to bypass them both, they had no time to be kids – too busy finding food to put in their empty bellies, and organizing some new scam to finance the next few days of existence. Bosom buddies, kindred spirits, until Al had made a mistake, almost a fatal mistake. He’d screwed up big time.

Jay recalled Al’s voice the night he’d told him about Mario’s daughter Anna. ‘What would you have done?’ he’d asked Jay. ‘If this beautiful girl, like she’s sixteen, with huge tits, and an ass like a ripe peach, slips into bed next to you and begins going down on you. Only coming up for air and to beg you to fuck her. Like I’ve got the biggest fucking hard-on, and suddenly she’s pushing her tight little pussy down on my cock. She’s no virgin, and as I go inside she’s screaming to fuck her hard, cause that’s the way she likes it. Man, believe me I tried to stop! I tell you, I really tried. All the time, I’m telling myself she’s my best friend’s daughter. But Christ, she’s gagging for it and pumping me like crazy.

‘I stayed away from Anna after that, tried to avoid her, but she kept coming on to me. Until one night she warns me if I don’t fuck her she’s going to tell her father I raped her, took her virginity. I call her bluff. I knew it was a risk, but I’d no choice.’

At that point Jay had glimpsed a chink in Al’s armour of arrogance as he said, ‘One fuck, one simple fuck loused up everything. Mario didn’t believe me. I was lucky to hang on to my cock, and to this day he still thinks his fucking daughter is Mother Theresa.’

After this confession Al and Jay had struck up a rapport, and a friendship began to grow. Jay knew it was an incongruous pairing and one that would never have existed on the outside. Theirs was a meeting of opposites, but nevertheless he felt at ease in Al’s company as he knew Al did in his. Day after day, week after week, Al had poured his dark and innermost secrets into Jay’s greedy ears. He had kept diaries of his time with Mario, detailed and comprehensive memoirs of their twelve-year partnership. And night after night, while his cell-mate slept, Jay had stayed awake scribbling in his notebook, recording Al’s life – a life of organized crime, littered with dead bodies. It had fascinated Jay, gripped him from the first telling, and he’d listened avidly to how Al had met Mario Petroni when they were twenty-year-olds, young hell raisers with the smell of fresh blood on their hands. From the tenement basements of Hell’s Kitchen on Manhattan’s Westside they hatched ambitious schemes of how they were to become big Mafia dons, bigger and better than any before.

And during the three years he’d shared a cell with Al, Jay had also quietly observed his gradual decline into insanity. The end came when Teach was found dead in a pool of his own vomit, his face the same colour as the concrete floor of the prison cell. Al Colacello the invincible, the teacher, had done something really stupid – shot up on smack from a supplier who was known to cut his drugs with baking powder when he could get it, rat poison when he couldn’t.

In a strange way Jay had missed Teach; missed his crude street humour, his outrageous arrogance. Above all he’d missed the protection Al’s friendship had afforded him. The gangster’s life and death had inspired Killing Time, and he would always be grateful to him – killing machine or not – for that at least.

Jay finally stopped pacing. He stood perfectly still for several minutes as he bottled his memories, then moved back to the bed. He lit a cigarette and filled his lungs with smoke. Why go back? he asked himself. Let it be, leave it alone, let go.

But then the nagging sense of injustice returned, and with it the need for revenge, as it had countless times before. An eye for an eye. Get the motherfuckers who framed you and tell the world about it. Anyway, he concluded, it wasn’t about going back, it was about going forward. Because then and only then could he begin to live again. Exhaling, he watched the smoke rise into the air and evaporate. He was feeling better already.

It was Todd Prescott’s persistent erection pressing between her buttocks that finally woke his wife Kelly. With her head buried deep in linen-covered duck down she stifled a groan. Then lifting a blonde tousled head, she whispered, ‘I’ve got to pee.’

Gently Todd grabbed her hips, his fingers pressing into hard flesh. ‘You’re not getting away with that old line … Come on, honey, be nice to your baby. You know how horny I get before congress.’

Kelly pushed her ass into her husband’s groin, biting the corner of her lip as she felt his hot hands ease her buttocks open. If there was one thing she detested about Todd, it was his hands. It wasn’t the only thing, but they were high on the hate list. Hairless soft hands, the small fingers capped with tiny white nails. ‘Your husband’s got a politician’s hands – like pumping wet fish,’ her brother had commented on more than one occasion. She was forced to agree.

Kelly loathed watching Todd’s limp fingers stroke her body; clamped her eyes shut when they slid into her pubic hair; and usually thought about a new Donna Karan dress, or the big beefy hands of her yoga teacher and occasional lover, when the baby fingers probed inside her.

But this morning she was thinking about something she’d read late last night in the Boston Globe. The headline had been running through her brain like tickertape ever since. ‘Kaminsky Released from Cedar State Pen.’ A grainy photograph of Jay as a nineteen-year-old Harvard freshman had accompanied the article. Lantern-jawed, with heavy-lidded chestnut eyes that could look dark brown depending on his mood. Thick hair, shining like ebony, slicked back above a high tanned brow. Her prom date, her first ‘let him go all the way’ date; her sweet, considerate, innocent teenage love.

As Todd pumped, she thought about Jay. She wondered if prison had destroyed his good looks. Would all that bitterness and anger have warped not only the inside, but also the outside?

Todd’s shouting intruded just then. ‘Baby! My sweet baby.’

Wiggling her bottom, Kelly contracted her internal muscles at the same time to hurry her husband along on his final lap. Two more thrusts and it would all be over. Kelly was counting. It took four. Until the next time, she thought, and there always was a next time.

It was the story of her life. Ever since her father’s death when she was nineteen, then losing Jay, she had been filling in the gaps in a desperate quest for the one thing that constantly eluded her. Love. The word rang in her head, bouncing back and forth like a tennis ball.

She felt Todd’s hands on her shoulders, and suppressed the urge to recoil. His voice was whispering in her ear, but it was her father’s words she could hear. Kelly, you are a beautiful princess, and there will always be men who want you. But you were one of the lucky ones. God was generous; he gave you a brain as well. And so there’s nothing you can’t have, no place you can’t go. Don’t waste a minute.

Paul Tyler had been right. At forty-three, there were few places she hadn’t been and there had always been a man. Her first husband, Maynard Fraser Jnr, a wealthy Wasp businessman, had showered her with gifts. Jewels were his thing, and Kelly wore his success. The purchase of a new tower block would be followed by Kelly’s glittering appearance in an antique diamond choker. But three years into the marriage, when Maynard was fifty-two and Kelly a few days off her twenty-ninth birthday, he was killed in a light aircraft somewhere in British Honduras. His body was never found. Kelly had never loved Maynard; she’d been fond of him which was a totally different thing. Yet she was genuinely sorry to lose him, and in the first few months of bereavement she missed his ebullient presence in their vast apartment on Manhattan’s Eastside, and their sprawling beach house in East Hampton. To ease the loss, Kelly threw herself into Maynard’s electronics business, doubling the profits in the next two years as the technological age began to grip the entire world. A merger with the giant multi-national Cirax diluted her stake, and the much-publicized battles between its megalomaniacal head and Kelly Fraser made ‘Beauty and the Beast’ headlines more than once in the Wall Street Journal.

In 1986 Kelly had sold out and bought a house in the Caribbean, where six months later she met the man who was to become her second husband. Tim Reynolds, two years younger than herself, was a budding film producer, overflowing with creative angst and poetic romanticism. They met on the beach: she was searching for shells, and he was pretending to read whilst watching her over the top of his book, catching her off guard. This time, with Tim, she had told herself, it’s for real, like in all the schmaltzy movies and love songs. And for two years Kelly believed in the myth, convinced herself that she was loved and in love. Whenever yet another bizarre film scheme floundered, she backed her husband both emotionally and financially – until the final straw, the one that breaks even the most ardent camel’s back. She found Tim in their bed with one of her so-called best friends, a guy called Jack Silvers.

In the next few years Kelly had managed as much as humanly possible to forget. Yet occasionally something would remind her of what she privately referred to as her ‘twilight time’. She couldn’t remember half of the men she’d slept with; they’d all merged into one huge grey mass. It was her friend Weston Kane who had rescued her, rebuilt her self-esteem and persuaded her to go back into business, and in 1990 Tyler Publications was born. The media had proved a natural arena for the gregarious and charmingly devious Kelly. At last she had found her forte, and she could honestly say that the last few years as head of Tyler had been the happiest of her life.

Kelly slid out of bed, ignoring Todd’s glancing peck on her right shoulder, and his muttered, ‘That was great, baby.’

She crossed the large room, her bare feet making no sound on the deep pile carpet. As she stepped into the bathroom, she felt Todd’s hot sperm dribbling down her inner thighs and shuddered with distaste. The door closed behind her with a quiet click and she walked towards the shower at the far end, passing white walls, white handbasins and stacks of white towels. Even the travertine marble that cooled the soles of her feet was white. Everything was white and, according to the interior designer, the absolute last word in minimalist chic. It looked like a luxurious hospital theatre on first impression, and Kelly’s comment to Todd that it was ridiculously large for one person had produced a dismissive shrug. She’d gone on to say that an entire family could live in her bedroom and dressing room; combined, they were bigger than the average apartment. Then she’d quickly reminded herself that this was where she’d always wanted to be. The ultimate ‘Chez nous’, the biggie, the colonial spread on Capitol Hill: M Street, Georgetown, Washington DC. Complete with European antiques, impressionist paintings, fully equipped gym and a state-of-the-art kitchen that she rarely went into.

Suddenly a voice sprang into her mind, interrupting Kelly’s musings. It was saying something she had buried deep, so deep that it sometimes felt as if it had happened to someone else. Kelly wanted to scream like she had as a child when she’d turned over a stone to find a teeming mass of worms underneath. She turned on the shower, but made no attempt to step into the cubicle.

Placing both hands against her ears she pressed hard, humming a tune, but the words would not go away. ‘Jay Kaminsky, you have been found guilty of the manslaughter of Matthew Fierstein. I have no option but to …’ Kelly blinked, and at the same time a shutter clicked in her brain: she saw Jay on the day he’d been sentenced, his face a study of total incomprehension. He looked like a frightened little boy who’d misunderstood the sentence and was certain the judge and jury would tell him they’d made an awful mistake and he could go home soon. Jay’s shocked expression had plagued her for months afterwards; so much so, she’d thought at one point she would go mad. When the image had finally disappeared, she’d prayed it would never return. And it hadn’t until today.

Kelly stepped into the steaming cabinet and turned the temperature up high. She pushed her right hand into an exfoliating glove, and with slow deliberate movements she began to scrub her body. Round and round she rubbed, until her skin smarted. Yet she continued to rub, harder and harder, and with each circular motion she repeated in her head the maxim, the one the Pact always used in times of stress. Stay calm, stay cool but above all stay in control.