Base Notes, page 33
He had never dropped his scissors.
The tips of the two blades caught against my ribs and skittered upward, puncturing the barber’s cape and the fabric of my T-shirt as they gouged two ragged parallels from my waist to my armpit. The butcher-shop tang of blood bloomed between us. Before he hit my axillary artery, I got his wrist in my grip. Because both my hands were joined by the clothesline, the defensive maneuver threw me off balance. Giovanni bucked his hips and sent me sprawling.
He could have run then. He should have. Instead he kicked me in the stomach and came at me with the scissors, and I knew that no matter his regret, no matter his intent to seek justice, this had always been something of which he was capable. Briefly, it filled me with fellow feeling, perhaps with pride. I sure knew how to pick ’em. Then I jammed my heel into his crotch.
He fell as if hamstrung, red in the face and wheezing for each breath. The scissors spun out of his loosened grip and slid underneath the coatrack.
I didn’t move immediately to finish the job. A film of yellow had flooded my vision, the precursor to a blackout, and my ribs stung like I’d been flayed. For each of my painful breaths I heard him take two, almost sobbing. Lying there and looking up, I saw the row of black-and-white photos hanging on the wall: chiaroscuro studies of West Village architecture. The scrawled signature in the white margin: J.J. Betjeman.
I closed my eyes and inhaled, smelled Barbicide and citrus, vetiver and oil. I saw Giovanni on the sofa, holding a negroni sour, smiling up at Jane as she shook another at the bar. I saw the smile turn to me, saw his eyes crinkle at the edges as he laughed and said, Pink panty droppers. She’s using navy-strength gin.
She would never forgive me for this. Would she?
“You don’t have to,” I said, the words weak with a lack of air. “Giovanni, you don’t have to tell.”
He groaned, forearms pressed between his thighs. Through clenched teeth he said, “Fuck you.”
Rolling to my side, leaving blood smears on the tile, I got up on all fours. Nausea made me gag. I swallowed sour spit and sat back on my heels. The clothesline was still wrapped around my knuckles, biting into my skin. Slowly, aching all the way, I walked on my knees across the tile floor to where Giovanni lay.
He was watching me, panting, not even attempting escape. We both knew what was coming. It was too late for anything else. Maybe it had always been too late for anything else.
I looked at the clothesline between my hands and suddenly loathed it. When I started to unwind it from my knuckles, Giovanni’s eyes widened with confusion at first, and then with a fetal kind of hope. I cast the line away, but before he could ask any questions, I put my hands to his throat. His well-barbered skin was soft, in the arc between my thumb and forefinger, marred by a faint scratch of stubble that had begun to emerge toward the end of the day.
I felt him swallow, once, and draw a single breath, and then I put all of my weight into the vulnerable place below his jaw. His windpipe gave—a palpable crunch—but it wasn’t his breath I hoped to stop. It was the blood that fed his brain.
Why my hands, and not the clothesline I had brought? I owed it to him to feel this fully. The clothesline was impersonal, and this murder was the opposite.
Giovanni wanted to suffer for his crimes? Well, so did I.
33
Notes de Tête: Alcohol Fumes
Notes de Cœur: Dust, Mildew, Damp Concrete
Notes de Fond: Old Paper, Old Piss, Used-Car Accord
I called in sick the next morning. I wanted to call Jane. Or Beau. Or both of them. Nauseatingly, I wanted to text Giovanni. I wanted to sit in a room with human beings and make small, snide jokes and laugh and drink and eat and be surrounded by things and people and conversation that made me remember why I bothered.
If all of that was impossible—and it was—I only wanted Jane’s cold eyes, her skeptical mouth, her conviction that the ends would justify the means. I came so close to texting her, to asking her to come uptown. If not to comfort me, then at least to offer reassurance I had made the correct decision.
Of course, I couldn’t. There was no one I could turn to, not with this.
I hurt all over from the exertion of wrestling Giovanni into the car, out of it, into the basement and the tub. My knuckles were split from the alcohol. I had run out of gauze and Band-Aids, patching up my ribs. When the adrenaline drained away, I felt shaky and hollow. Food made me queasy, and so did coffee, but I braved the latter to stave off a brutal headache.
I did laundry, but when the end-of-cycle buzzer rang, I was loath to leave my studio for the basement. Morbidly, I entertained the idea that I would hear sloshing in the tub, fingernails peeling at the underside of the plastic wrap.
It was just difficult to believe that he was dead. I couldn’t have killed him. Could I?
Iolanda heard the dryer when it finished and called down the stairs, asking if I would do a load for her. I had to swallow twice before I could answer, and she called down again in the silence, sounding worried.
“You okay, Vicky?”
“Yeah!” It rang brightly off the damp concrete. “Sorry. Just had the door shut. You need laundry?”
“Just some sheets and towels, no big rush.”
“I’ll be up in a minute. You can just leave it by the door.”
“Besos, baby. You’re the best.”
Debatable.
How was I supposed to live with Giovanni’s corpse in my basement for a month? But I would have to. I needed him to be as flammable as possible before I carted him out to the country and burned him to a crisp.
My coffee, which had lain quiescent for the last hour, threatened to turn on me. Maybe tomorrow, when Barry inevitably inquired about my welfare, I could tell him I had been struck with a twenty-four-hour stomach flu.
Except the next day, he ran late—probably with tummy troubles of his own, no doubt brought on by too much fun the night before—and by the time he arrived I had bigger problems than a nosy assistant.
Have patience with this next part. Think of it as further proof of concept. I have already explained, in a manner of speaking, why it is that I still need a person’s body to create this kind of perfume, even if the client has never met the subject. I can give you the plastic and ink and dusty carpet of my office. But now I will show you what happens when I attempt to create a perfume without that key ingredient.
Let us call my problems Detective Virgilio and Officer Ryan—those were their names, after all. I’m not liable to forget. And they were very concerned because they thought I might have some information on a recent disappearance they had been assigned to investigate.
There were any number of recent disappearances over which I could have panicked. But there was only one to which I jumped: the one for which I deserved to suffer. Because this was another way to do so.
“Of course,” I said, overdone as an actor in a low-budget daytime drama. My face felt motion-smoothed and artificial. I comforted myself with the thought that anyone in this situation would feel the same way, whether they had killed the man in question or not. “If there’s anything I can do to help . . .”
Detective Virgilio smiled at me like she could tell I wasn’t being sincere. I wish I could show her to you—Virgilio, I mean. She isn’t what you would imagine, I don’t think. And Officer Ryan . . . loomed.
She told me, “Normally we don’t jump on cases when the person isn’t a vulnerable adult, but—”
But I could fill in the rest. Giovanni wouldn’t miss a day of work unless he was flat on his back. And even then, he’d call someone. The concerned receptionist would text her friends, his coworkers, asking what she should do. Someone would stop by his apartment but nobody would answer, no matter how long they leaned on the buzzer.
The receptionist would tell the police there had been someone in the shop a few days ago, raised voices, an altercation. She would give a description. Someone at the shop would know I was a client, would mention that I was a friend. They would find me, and ask me when I had last seen him, and if he had been acting odd. I knew the answers to give—he had been angry and depressed, about to lose everything he had worked so hard for. I could twist this so they suspected a suicide, and I felt sick at the thought. But it was the best option I had, and it was believable. It might even keep them from really digging for clues.
Not that there should be many. I had been very careful cleaning up the shop. Once I had him wrapped in the barber’s cape and removed to the trunk of my Zipcar, I had wiped down the scissors and stowed them in the Barbicide at his station. I had swept up all the hair and bagged it to take away with me and burn. I had mopped the floor to a sparkling white that would have satisfied Giovanni, if he had been around to see it. There was no evidence that I had been there on the night of his disappearance. As far as the NYPD was concerned, the last person to see Giovanni alive was his receptionist. The last in a long line of them—he would never fire her for failing to meet his exacting standards.
But I digress. The police in my office! And my poor sweating carcass abject before them, my brain overclocked trying to play the whole conversation out before we could have it.
But then Virgilio asked: Pippin Miles. When was the last time I had seen him?
The frantic hamster wheel of my thoughts stopped so fast that it threw me off completely. “The detective?”
Virgilio was very clear that Miles was a private investigator, not a detective, but yes. He had some kind of ongoing case about a string of disappearances connected to a big investment company. My name was in his notes, and they were speaking to everyone involved.
The way she talked about the case made it sound like a Hollywood blockbuster: the C-suite of a shady financial firm all mysteriously vanished, and then the lone wolf looking into the crime. It sounded like it should be turned over to the feds, solved on primetime TV.
And yet I could not summon fear. Nor could I conjure a shred of misdirection, of defensive charm. I could not climb back on the hamster wheel and sprint in the opposite direction.
There was a ringing in my ears that slowly resolved into a shout: Pip Miles? That two-bit detective was who they wanted to find? What for? What about an incomparable barber, an artist, a well-dressed man, an ornament to the streets of this vicious city? Why weren’t they looking for my friend?
Detective Virgilio seemed both intrigued and disappointed when I described meeting Miles at the holiday market. Nothing after that? she asked. He hadn’t called, or sent an email? I did not mention Eisner’s irate relation of Miles’s visit to the office. I simply reiterated details of the smoky air, the slushy snow. I told her Miles wasn’t wearing gloves; his hands were red, and chapped across the knuckles. Little things. She left unsatisfied, taciturn Officer Ryan in tow, and told me that she’d be in touch. She left her card, extension circled in ballpoint pen.
I thought of Giovanni’s hands—manicured and clean, always in motion. The wave his hatband left in his oiled hair. The smell of his pomade, his cologne. The kiss he’d placed on Jane’s left cheek, where I had kissed her later that same night. Little things.
I almost wanted to call Virgilio back. Almost.
When I got home, Iolanda caught me at the door.
“Vicky,” she said, looking grave. “The cops came by and asked for you.”
It only knocked me off kilter for a moment. “Yeah,” I said, and if I sounded shaky, what came next would explain it. “A, um . . . a friend of mine is missing.” Not that the police cared much.
“Not that pretty girl?” Her face fell.
“No,” I said. “Not her.”
“You got a lot of friends you never invite over?”
“Some.”
“Well, I hope this friend’s okay,” said Iolanda. “Only, the cops asked could they come in and have a look around.”
“Did they have a warrant?” It came out more sharply than I intended. But I had used up all my suavity some hours ago.
“Jesus, no. What for? I told them fuck off, so they did. I don’t want no cops in my house.” She leaned against the doorframe and cocked her head at me. “You sure you’re okay, Vicky? Not in any kind of trouble?”
“Only the usual kinds.”
“Yeah, I bet you’re made of the usual kinds of trouble. Hey, thanks for folding those sheets, but you gotta get better at the fitted one, okay?”
“I’ll google it next time,” I said. I was incalculably tired and hoped next time wouldn’t be tonight.
“Get some rest,” she said. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks,” I said, and staggered down the stairs.
Via text, I told Barry I needed a mental-health break of unspecified duration. It wasn’t far from the truth, and he would take it seriously because he was that kind of person. I should be safe from any office-related prying for a week at least.
Hopefully, that would buy me enough time.
When you’re in my line of business—the murder-for-hire business, not perfume—you spend a lot of time thinking about what you’ll do if things take a sudden turn. I had a plan for this scenario. Or . . . if not this exact scenario, something enough like it that my contingencies could still be put into place.
First I bought a beater, for cash. The seller didn’t have the title; that wasn’t a problem for me. I parked it about ten blocks uptown, accessible in a pinch but not obviously associated with my immediate surroundings.
Next, I spent a couple of afternoons at the library—dried piss, vanillin of aging books—using their boxy old computers to trawl Craigslist. Each day, once I had a long list of phone numbers next to brief descriptions of shady-sounding properties, I went back home and used a prepaid phone to call increasingly odd and unorthodox people until I had zeroed in on what seemed like the best bolt-hole of a bad lot: the most space for the least money, with an absentee landlord on some kind of artistic sabbatical in Berlin. Sight unseen, of course; it was probably a shithole. But I lived in a basement right now, so I could make the best of it. I put cash into the owner’s account at a strange little credit union, claiming a distrust of money orders and PayPal skins that he seemed to share. The teller didn’t even ask for my ID.
If I didn’t end up needing any of these options, I would happily eat the cost of the car and the deposit on the rental. It was all Eisner’s money, anyway.
Speaking of Eisner: successfully distilled, burned, and dumped.
I packed necessities and a few professional appliances. Two of my stills, for instance, each delicate piece wrapped in paper towels. I kept the third out and assembled for the unpleasant eventuality of distilling Giovanni. Morbid? Maybe. But I wouldn’t let him go to waste.
I made all of these preparations hoping they would be unnecessary. But it was always better to be prepared for the worst.
The week went by. I heard nothing from the cops. Nor did I hear anything from Jane.
Had she guessed what I had done? Had she tried to text Giovanni, tried to call him? Worrying that the strength of their long acquaintance would not, in fact, give him pause, had she wanted to reason with him, to plead, to threaten? When all her overtures came to nothing, did her clever mind turn to me?
If so, I expected we might never speak again.
I imagined her cradling Beau’s head on her breast, stroking his hair, staring sharply into space. Impatient, and in pain. She would not share her grief with him. She wouldn’t trust him to receive it. As if she would trust me, its author.
While packing up, I tried not to think about the fact that leaving New York meant leaving Jane. Even if she cut me out of her life forever after this, leaving the city meant losing the possibility of encountering her on a street corner, of catching her scent in the air after she had left a room.
Perhaps I would not have to leave. Or perhaps . . . but I should not even entertain the hope. She had a whole life here.
Yes, and it was crushing her. There was a part of her that wanted, I thought. In the same way that I wanted. While the greater piece of her heart would never forgive Giovanni’s murder, that dark yearning might enjoin her to push past it in search of something. I only had to figure out what.
I did get texts, and on Monday started getting calls, from Barry. I ignored them—he could manage on his own. Loath as I was to admit it, he was capable in his way. Not a hero among noses, but he had a better head for business than I did. Given a little bit of budget, he had made good on his marketing promises. And he was the opposite of a misanthrope, which went over well with a lot of our suppliers.
Maybe if I vanished in a puff of smoke, Bright House would stick around. Barry could make it work on his own, at least for a while. It hurt to think of relinquishing my hold on something I had striven so hard to maintain. Barry would make changes I would not have approved. But he would sell perfume, and Jonathan’s name would be on the labels. Mine would go unwritten, haunting Bright House, remembered by industry insiders. Barry wasn’t even the worst nose in the business—if he ever quit smoking he might get somewhere.
Two weeks. Barry was leaving voice mails. I deleted them. Sent a couple of texts telling him to fuck off, in language only slightly more elegant than that. If I made it three weeks, and got rid of Giovanni, I could go back to work. I had always told myself—told Jane and Beau, even—that the lack of a corpse made things confusing. Once my basement was empty of everything but ghosts, I could go back to normal life.
I made it seventeen days.
For full potency, for the highest ratio of volatiles, I should have stuck it out a little longer. For better volume, and better flammability, I should have cycled out the old alcohol for fresh. But I hated having him down there with me.
I told myself it was because of the cops—I was nervous they might come around again, this time with a warrant. But I had hated it from the first moment I stepped back and stared down at Giovanni under his cocoon of Saran Wrap.
On day seventeen, I woke up late and fast, sweating from a nightmare I couldn’t remember. I skipped breakfast—or rather, lunch—and went straight to the messy business of removing my friend’s mortal remains from my home.
