“Him? Oh, the guy renting a—look, buddy, that’s it, let’s—”
He’d said enough. The other man swiveled his head, swiftly, once, to check us out.
It wasn’t Johnny—I mean, it wasn’t Stanley.
But that didn’t faze me. I shot past the security guard.
“Where are you—” he yelled. “Come back here!”
I started running toward the figure. I believed that I recognized him. That was because I had made one last stop before exiting the city.
—
Taylor Weinrod had been surprised to see me. I had arrived, out-of-breath, after leaving Katie ensconced at my place. I noticed that his fancy Riverside Drive apartment seemed virtually unchanged, though it now housed one less occupant.
Taylor was, as always, impeccably dressed, and looked every inch the executive at LCM. You’d never know he’d once been a trivial man himself in Jersey City, in long-ago days he preferred to forget. And of which I was a somewhat irksome reminder.
“How can I help you, Roy?” he asked, tersely.
He clearly thought I was looking for work—or that I had another trivial find to deprive him and his station of, as I had with Ambersons. But I was after something else today.
“I was wondering if you knew where I could find Abner,” I said.
Taylor stiffened, noticeably. He’d left his wife and kid for our mutual friend, even wrangled him an on-air gig. But their affair had apparently been too hot not to cool down.
“You know that we’ve … called it a day?” In his successful-guy way, he tried to be discreet.
“Yes, and my condolences on that.” I secretly thought I should offer congratulations. “But you’re the only one I could think of to ask.”
“Well,” he gave an absurdist laugh, “I don’t have his forwarding address, if that’s what you—”
“Yes, that’s sort of what I was looking for, to be honest.”
I was hoping Taylor was just holding back, out of propriety.
“Well, would it be possible to send him a message, or—”
“No, for chrissake, Roy, it wouldn’t!”
Taylor would never have raised his voice this way at work. I figured his guilt at dumping Abner—and how could it have been otherwise?—must have been great.
Still, his conscience would heal. I needed to know if Abner had been having any more trouble from Stanley Lager.
“Look,” I said, “we’re all adults. And maybe there’s something in this for you.”
I was gambling that Taylor would trust me again in a business capacity. It was worth a shot, though I was offering goods I didn’t possess.
“It’s about Jerry Lewis’s The Day the Clown Cried. Maybe you and LCM might be interested in—”
To my shock, I saw that, never mind not believing me, Taylor didn’t care. He gave a great, disgusted sigh. Then he pulled me, very roughly, to a nearby computer table.
“I want to show you something,” he said.
As we waited for his machine to boot up, Taylor now talked with surprising directness. “You take a risk for someone, you change your life around for someone, and you get a big foot in the face for it.”
Taylor had logged onto Abner’s PRINTIT!.com. But instead of gossip or reviews, the screen now showed a video stream of what looked like real, spectacularly bloody surgery.
“Abner told me he was in the hospital for gout,” Taylor went on, choking up. “But he was really having one of those … fat removals—those operations where they take out half your stomach, like that Beach Boys daughter had—” Carnie Wilson. “He even posted the whole thing on his Web site, for his fans. For God’s sake, look at that!”
As the surgeon sawed and stapled, I looked away.
“He wanted to do it for his new hottie. He met him at a party. This guy, whom he never named, said there was no reason not to look the way you wanted, that there were wonderful things you could do for yourself with surgery now, and … what kind of person would say that?!”
Suddenly I thought I knew what kind of person. Tears were flowing freely out of Taylor’s eyes. I felt sympathy for him. I felt shock that Abner, not he, had called it off. But, mostly, I felt a sense of urgency.
“So, no, Roy,” Taylor spat out, “I don’t know where you can reach him—”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I think I do.”
And with a pat on his back, I was gone.
—
Now, the man on the second floor of the crumbling mansion picked up his pace. He fled into a room at the far end of the hall. It would only take a second for me to reach it.
I slowed down, aware there could be danger.
I knew the guy was Abner. And I didn’t think he’d be alone.
