Tongues of Fire Read online

  The actress and her friends were sitting with their backs to the pastel meadows. She sat in the center, listening to something Armande was saying. Whatever it was made her smile. She had big teeth, white as piano keys, and glossy hair as black as the sharps and flats. Her eyes were huge and dark, surrounded by huge and dark frameworks of makeup; there were no lines on her face, but Rehv saw a slight tautness around her eyes and mouth, where lines should have been appearing by now: She had been a movie star for a long time.

  On one side sat a man who looked a lot like Armande, except he was younger, had longer hair, a deeper tan, and less intelligence on his face; and at that moment his smile was not quite as broad as Armande’s, although his mouth seemed capable of reaching such extremes. On the other side sat a thin dark woman who may have had an Oriental ancestor two or three generations before. Her face was much more intelligent than the man’s, but right now her mind was somewhere else.

  Still smiling with every muscle in his face, Armande turned to Rehv and said: “I think these people would like champagne.”

  “Good evening,” Rehv said to them. “What kind do you prefer?”

  “Laurent Perrier,” the actress said, rolling her r’s. She rolled them very nicely. The thought that she had chosen as she had for that reason crossed Rehv’s mind; but he remembered that there were good r’s for rolling in Krug, Dom Pérignon, and Pol Roger as well.

  “Do they make a pink champagne?” the young man asked. He had a light voice that made him sound even younger than he looked.

  “Yes,” Rehv said.

  The young man turned to the actress. “Do you feel like some of that?”

  “Oh, you silly boy.” She laughed, a laugh that began high and thin but was quickly pushed into a lower, warmer register.

  “The pink, then?” Rehv asked her.

  She looked up at him, revealing diamond seashells on each earlobe and a narrow middle-aged wrinkle at the base of her neck. “No,” she said coldly.

  For a moment no one spoke. Rehv heard a glass shatter on the other side of the room. Impatiently the thin dark woman said: “Let him have the pink if that’s what he wants, and we’ll have the other.”

  “Tania, you clever girl,” the actress said without looking at her. “That’s just what we’ll do. Magnums,” she told Rehv.

  He nodded and went away. He heard the girl hiss, “Don’t call me a clever girl.”

  He and the sommelier and Armande brought the ice buckets and the champagne. Armande’s smile grew more sincere as the corks popped. Each pop meant one hundred and ninety dollars. Armande poured some for the actress to taste. She raised the flute, touched it to her lips, tilted it, flared her nostrils, and allowed a little trickle of pale gold into her mouth.

  “Very nice, Armande. Thank you.”

  “Je vous en prie.” Armande’s lips were drawn so far back his molars showed.

  Rehv poured pink champagne for the young man. He gulped it down. “Delicious,” he said defiantly. No one contradicted him. Rehv filled his glass.

  The actress ordered fois gras and lobster; the young man bouchée de ris de veau and shrimp wrapped in sole; the woman called Tania assiette de charcuterie and steak tartare.

  “A woman just ordered steak tartare,” Rehv said to Armande as he went into the kitchen.

  “What woman?”

  “The dark one at number nine.”

  Armande grunted and gave him a little wink he didn’t understand. Something about it made him look back at number nine and think of the three of them in bed together.

  By the time Rehv brought the main course, two-thirds of the champagne was gone. He refilled their glasses and began making the steak tartare. The woman named Tania stared into the wooden bowl, watching his hands.

  “Christ, I hate New York,” she said suddenly. “Let’s go back to LA.”

  “But we only just got here, Tania darling,” the actress said. She placed her hand on Tania’s. Rehv noticed she had rather short, stubby fingers, but they were well hidden by rubies and emeralds.

  Tania pulled her hand away. “Or Paris. Or somewhere.”

  “You’re just tired,” the actress said in a soothing tone. “Have some more champagne.”

  “I hate that piss.” Tania leaned forward and looked past her. “Have you got any coke, Jamie?”

  The young man put down his glass. His cheeks had gone the color of his drink. “On me, you mean?”

  “Of course ‘on you,’ jerk.”

  His cheeks went a little pinker. “Not on me,” he said through clenched teeth. “There’s some in the room.”

  “I know that. Christ Almighty.”

  “That’s enough,” the actress said, quite calmly, as if she were dealing with unruly toddlers. She drained her glass. “Let’s go dancing tonight.”

  “Great,” the young man said.

  “Where?” Tania asked without enthusiasm.

  “The Pink Flush,” the young man suggested.

  “Shit.”

  “We’ll go to Giorgio’s,” the actress said.

  Rehv set a plate of steak tartare in front of the dark woman. She glanced at it, then pushed the table out three or four inches and stood up.

  “Where are you going?” the actress said.

  “To smoke a joint in the can,” the dark woman replied, pushing past Rehv. The chinchilla coat, which had been on the seat beside her, slid to the floor.

  Rehv bent down to pick it up. He saw that a key had slipped out of the pocket and was lying in the folds of the soft fur. It was a long brass key held by a chain to a thick brass disc. On the disc was the number 916. Rehv stuck the key in the side of his shoe, laid the coat on the seat, stood up, and poured more champagne.

  “We’ll need some more,” the actress said.

  “A magnum?”

  “Yes.”

  “And of the rosé as well?”

  “Go ahead if you want, darling,” the actress said. “You should have what you like.”

  “No. I’ll share yours.”

  “What a nice thing to say.”

  Rehv walked toward the kitchen. “Another magnum at number nine,” he told the sommelier.

  “That pink shit?”

  “No.”

  Rehv went through the kitchen door, but turned right and continued quickly down the hall to the waiter’s changing room. He opened the closet in the corner where Armande kept his spare suit. He removed his green jacket and put on Armande’s black dinner jacket. He took the key from his shoe, slipped it into his pocket, and went to the door. He looked both ways along the hall. He saw no one. He ran down the hall, through the staff door, and into the street.

  The hotel stood on the other side. Eight or nine broad stairs led to the well-lit entrance. Rehv crossed the street and mounted them, trying to look like a man on his way to a party. He stepped into the revolving doorway.

  “Good evening, sir,” said a doorman, touching the rim of his red top hat. He gave the door a little push to help Rehv through.

  He walked across the marble floor of the lobby toward the elevators at the other side. A white poodle ran past him, dragging its leash. A woman called: “Mignon! Mignon!” The poodle ignored her and ran into a waiting empty elevator. Rehv followed it inside. It looked up at him and growled. He pushed it out the door with his foot and pressed the button marked nine. As the leather-padded doors slid closed he heard the woman say, “Bad, bad doggie.”

  The elevator stopped at the mezzanine. Two men entered. One was dressed just like Rehv. The other wore a burnous. The man who was dressed like him pressed number eight. The man in the burnous pressed no number at all. Perhaps they’re together, Rehv thought.

  On the eighth floor the man who was dressed like him got out. The doors closed. Rehv and the man in the burnous glanced at each other. Their eyes met. They looked away. The doors opened. Rehv walked through them, the man in the burnous after him.

  A plaque on the wall read: “901–948.” Rehv followed it. He heard the man in t
he burnous behind him, moving quietly on the thick blue carpet. At the end of the broad hall he came to a longer intersecting corridor. Another plaque indicated that rooms 901 to 921 were to the left, rooms 922 to 948 to the right. Rehv turned left. The Arab’s footsteps faded away.

  Rehv walked along the corridor, listening carefully. He passed room 916. He was almost at the end before he heard the muffled click of a door closing, far away. He turned and looked down the length of the corridor. There was no one to see.

  Rehv hurried back to room 916. He inserted the key in the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open. He was in a sitting room. It was very bright. There were three floor lamps, two table lamps, a desk lamp, and a chandelier, all turned on. In the middle of the room a dozen mauve leather suitcases of different sizes stood in a row. That’s that, he thought. It would take someone an hour to go through those, even if he knew what he was doing, and Rehv didn’t. He glanced into the bedroom and saw no sign that anyone had been in there. He was about to leave when he remembered the bathroom. He hurried to it through a door that led from the bedroom.

  On the counter by the sink he saw a mauve leather case, the size and shape of a workman’s toolbox. It was open. Inside were jumbled tubes of lipstick and eye shadow, jars of face creams and body lotions, bottles of rubbing alcohol and contact lens solution, mascara, hair brushes, combs, birth control pills. He reached in, feeling an unpleasant sensation in his stomach, one that somehow reminded him of boyhood masturbation. It didn’t stop him.

  Near the bottom his fingertips touched something large and metallic. He pulled it out: a rectangular cookie tin. After prying off the top he found a clear plastic bag full of white powder, a small velvet-covered box, and five thick stacks, each held together by elastic bands, of one-hundred-dollar bills. He opened the velvet box. Diamonds, gold, silver shone inside.

  Rehv took off Armande’s dinner jacket. He forced the plastic bag into one sleeve, and filled the pockets with the bundles of currency. He closed the velvet box, replaced it in the cookie tin, and pressed the top on. He wiped the cookie tin with a damp piece of toilet paper and put it back in the bottom of the case. He left the room.

  Rehv opened the front door very slightly and listened. He heard no voices, no footsteps. With Armande’s jacket over his arm he walked quickly to the elevators, and beyond, to the door marked exit. He ran down the stairs very fast, taking them two at a time and leaping the last three or four to each landing. When he reached the ground floor he paused to catch his breath.

  Rehv opened the door and stepped into the lobby. He saw no one except the clerk behind the desk. The clerk did not see him; he was bent over an adding machine, pushing buttons. He crossed the lobby without hurrying, trying to move with even, deliberate strides. His heels sounded very loud on the marble. He reached the revolving door and stepped into one of the wedge-shaped quadrants. From the street someone walked into the quadrant opposite his. For a moment they looked directly at each other. Rehv saw the dark young woman with a trace of Oriental blood: Tania. She didn’t seem to notice him at all. She was too angry for that. They pushed each other around.

  The doorman touched the brim of his red top hat. “Good evening, sir,” he said again, although there was nothing in his tone to indicate he recognized the same sir who had entered a few minutes earlier. “Taxi?”

  “No thank you.” The doorman looked slightly disappointed. Perhaps he expected a tip.

  Rehv crossed the street with the same deliberate pace, wondering if the doorman was watching him, noticing how lightly dressed he was for winter. He reached the staff door and went inside.

  Now he ran down the hall to the staff changing room. He tore the money and the plastic bag from Armande’s jacket, rolled the bundles inside his nylon windbreaker, and locked them in his locker. He hung Armande’s jacket in the closet, pulled on his green waiter’s jacket, and hurried into the hall. Armande was walking quickly toward him.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “The toilet.”

  “What were you doing in there for so long?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Okay, okay. Eleven is waiting for their profiteroles. Hurry.”

  He brought profiteroles to number eleven. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the new busboy clearing the main-course dishes from number nine. The actress was allowing another golden trickle to pass between her lips. The young man wasn’t watching her, he was lighting a cigarette; but the busboy was. Rehv’s hands shook as he poured the chocolate sauce.

  He turned to number nine. “Dessert, madame?”

  “What have you got?” She had drunk a lot of champagne, but her speech was not at all slurred, nor did she speak too clearly, the way drunks sometimes do when they think they are fooling people. Only the large dark eyes seemed a little changed: vague, blurred. Rehv watched them while he recited the litany of desserts.

  She smiled at him in a conspiratorial way. “Just coffee, please.”

  “Mocha mousse for me,” the young man said, blowing smoke across the table.

  “And for the young lady?” Rehv asked, glancing at the empty chair.

  “Nothing,” the actress said. Suddenly she sounded very tired. “My children still have trouble sitting still for an entire meal.”

  “Christ, Mother,” the young man said.

  Their bill was $773. The actress left nine one-hundred-dollar bills on the silver plate and reached for her coat. Like waiters everywhere Rehv got to it first and helped her put it on. While her back was turned to him he slipped the key to room 916 into her coat pocket. Then he went to get the change.

  When he returned they had gone.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “‘Pimps needed for sociological study,’” read the young woman, squinting slightly at the text through wire-rimmed glasses. “‘Involves one fifteen-minute personal interview. Strictest anonymity and confidentiality assured. No names will be used in the study. Fee will be paid. Call Dr. Vere at 462-8315 between 11:30 P.M. and midnight, Tuesday and Wednesday only.’” The young woman looked up, still squinting. Fingerprints and dust coated the lenses of her glasses. “Is that it?” she asked.

  “That’s it,” Isaac Rehv replied.

  “How many issues? The more you do the cheaper it gets.”

  “One.”

  “One,” she repeated, and with a pencil made a tick in a box at the bottom of the form. She counted the number of words aloud, touching each one with the dull point of the pencil. She counted them again. Rehv felt an urge to clean her glasses. “Forty-two,” she said. She punched a few buttons on an adding machine. “Nineteen dollars and forty cents.”

  Rehv paid her and left the offices of the weekly. He hoped that Sheila and Quentin didn’t read the classified announcements in the Voice. They would want to know why the telephone number of The Loft was there. “Any publicity is good publicity,” he had heard Quentin say. He could remind Quentin of this, or he could say it must be a misprint and he knew nothing about it.

  Rehv knew it wasn’t perfect, but he could think of nothing better.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Armbrister had a look on his face that Krebs had seen before. It said: I am about to do something that is thought to be unpleasant, but I don’t really mind. It was a solemn face, but pleasure glowed in the convex windows of his eyes.

  Armbrister opened a drawer in his desk and groped about inside. For a moment Krebs thought he might be searching for tea, but only for a moment. One at a time, his hand hooked like a mechanical pincer used for moving contaminated objects, Armbrister lifted out the camera, the flashlight, the Swiss Army knife. He swept some papers aside with his forearm and set them on his green blotting pad in a little row, exhibits A, B, and C. They faced him like newly invented chess pieces whose moves he didn’t know.

  “I’m told these belong to you,” Armbrister said.

  Krebs said nothing. He felt his neck muscles tighten, pushing his head forward in the dogged way that Alice did
n’t like. “Toro. Olé,” she would say. Once it had made him hit her.

  “Do they?” Armbrister asked.

  The muscles bunched a little more. “You know they do.”

  A shadow moved behind the convex windows. Armbrister opened his mouth to say something, but before he could the telephone rang.

  “Hello,” Armbrister said. Krebs always answered the phone by saying, “Krebs.” Armbrister listened. His right hand picked up a red pencil and began drawing on the blotting paper. A sombrero. Two sombreros. A guitar. A cactus with spines. After a while he frowned and said, “Beaujolais? You think that’s good enough?” He listened some more, added spines to the cactus. “What did they bring us?” He began another sombrero. “Better make it a Bordeaux,” Armbrister said. “Bye-bye.” He put his lips to the mouthpiece, looked up at Krebs, and stopped himself from kissing it.

  Armbrister massaged the corners of his eyes with the tips of his index fingers, and blinked once or twice. Krebs remembered the goldfish in the dirty tank. “I’m going to be writing reports about you for the next month,” Armbrister said.

  They watched each other for what seemed like a long time. Finally Krebs spoke: “What are you going to say?” He couldn’t help himself.

  Armbrister did not reply. He sat back in his swivel chair, keeping his eyes on Krebs.

  “What are you going to say, goddamn it?” Krebs stood up, knocked the camera, flashlight, and Swiss Army knife onto the floor, and leaned across the desk. Armbrister’s eyes bulged even more than usual, showing their pink rims. He pushed his chair back a foot or two from the desk. “Tell me,” Krebs shouted. Behind him a door opened. He whirled and saw Armbrister’s lank-haired secretary standing in the doorway.

  “Did you want something, Mr. Armbrister?” she asked. But she wasn’t looking at Armbrister, she was looking at Krebs, and she sounded frightened.

  “No thank you, Jenny. We’re fine,” Armbrister replied. She closed the door. Krebs sat down. Silently Armbrister watched him for a minute or two. “What would you like me to say in the report?” he asked at last.