by Jeff Johnson
“Jesus man.” I got up, too. “You’re like the mother I never had.”
“You’ve lost weight since Suzanne left,” he said firmly, eyeing me. “When does she visit again?”
“Couple weeks.”
“Right then. Let’s get you back into fighting trim, shall we?” Santiago worked out two hours a day, six days a week, from five to seven a.m. “In anticipation of all the fighting you’ll be doing.”
I handed him my empty glass.
Traffic had gotten worse as the city swelled, but it still wasn’t nearly as bad as LA. I got on I-5, the freeway that seemed to go both everywhere worth going and everyplace to avoid, and headed south. As I drove, I thought about the way things were shaking out.
It was possible that massive boredom had made me into a different animal. I could be in the eye of the perfect storm, on a level I was just too dim to recognize. But that didn’t make any sense, not really. Santiago would have called me on it. Delia, of course, would have beaten me with such a thing. And Suzanne. Suzanne would have maybe noticed if I’d slipped into some kind of one-way funk that had more than her as an ingredient, but I had to be honest with myself about how dishonest I was with her.
I lit a cigarette and checked the rearview. No sign of my tail, but I knew they were back there. Santiago would have called ahead, so my appointment with Nigel would be on the books. I smiled grimly at the thought of it. I’d be going to the one place my tail wanted me to go, but way ahead of schedule. When I took the exit for the Oregon State Prison, I was the only car to turn off.
I guess my tail just kept on going.
It was hard to say what Nigel hated the most about prison. The food, the drug prices, the toilet paper, or the round-the-clock affirmation that he’d been bested by the boy wonder Agent Dessel. As long as I’d known Nigel he’d been of a questionable disposition, and our friendship had been one based on mutual goals and common enemies. Those goals were no more, and those enemies had consumed him alive. As the metal door opened and a skinhead in wrist and ankle shackles hop-walked to the scarred table where I sat waiting, I again realized that distance. Nigel sat and stared at me without speaking. I stared back. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and had been for long enough for the skin around it to go from black to purple and yellow, and there was a fresh-looking swastika on his neck. He smiled without humor. Missing a front tooth.
“’Sup,” he said finally.
“Dude.” I hated visiting anyone in prison. Visiting Nigel was somehow worse. “I, ah . . . I put some dough in your account.”
“Pretzels.” Nigel picked at a scab on his knuckle, still watching my eyes. “Maybe I’ll get crackers.”
“Yeah.” I touched my neck where his new tattoo was. “Makin’ friends?”
He tapped the table. It was wired.
“Shop is doing good,” I went on. “Wedding date is Halloween, firm. Taking Hank to get fitted for a tux next week.”
“You should kill that guy.”
I laughed it off, playing it like a joke, but I flared my eyes at him. “He’s okay. Kid’s got no future in music, but who does. Jiffy Lube is always looking for the Hanks of—”
“I’m serious, man.” Nigel glanced up at the camera behind me. “Take that kid to the Greyhound station and buy him a one-way ticket to wherever the fuck he won’t come back from. You’re rich. Set him up. Pay him off to take a ride.”
“Why the sudden change of—I thought you kinda just—Hank’s a harmless idiot, man. Right?”
“This whole fuckin’ thing surprises me, dude.” He looked down at his hands. “Delia.” He snorted. “Your little fuckin’ Delia. And you’re gonna let her get married to that little junkie skag? Exactly how fucked up are you?”
We were quiet for a minute. Prison smells like public school hallways, bad mop water, and sweat. Iodine. Wet iron. Fear. I listened to the distant clanging of hollow metal on harder metal. Somewhere, a man screamed in rage. Nigel looked back up at me and waited. When I didn’t say anything, he went on in a slow, low growl.
“You got blinders on, dude, and she does too. Hank’s a piece of shit. He cheats on her for one thing, has the whole time. So it’s more than just the drugs. But that fuckin’ guy will bring her down hard, Darby, all the way down to where she can’t get back into the light. Delia goes down, then so do you.”
“Ah.” I gave him a tight smile. “You’re worried about your commissary money. The dough I send your lawyer. You’re not worried about Delia. You’re not even worried about me. You’re worried about my money.”
“Dude, you don’t owe me for this shit.” Nigel raised his hands and rattled the chains. “Not really. I know it. You know it. And who the fuck cares anyway. It was only a matter of time before I got busted for something. I hated you in the beginning, though.” He shifted, trying to get comfortable. “When that mad fucker Dessel came after me, I thought it was because of you, because that guy fuckin’ hates you so bad. But it wasn’t. Pressman told me months ago. I was just another case they were working the whole time, so it might have been the other way around. They maybe first came across your name as a possible accomplice of mine.” He leaned back. So did I.
“Fuck,” I said finally.
“Yeah. You didn’t know that, but you keep in mind who told you. Me and you, we were solid for a long time, Darby. S’why I’m telling you about Hank. In the interest of keeping the goodwill flowing.”
“Huh.” I considered. “So Hank’s a junkie? You know this?”
“Straight up. Mexican tar. Smokes it.”
“And the cheating thing?”
Nigel laughed bitterly. “Skank named Becky, looks kinda like Delia but she has big tits. Hank’s one true love. Works at Sho’s Diner. The night shift.”
I must have looked confused. A wicked smile spread over Nigel’s face.
“Delia, she’s the smart one. You’re cunning, Darby. Like an animal. But the junkie mind is a sneaky kind of brilliant, baby, borders on witchcraft. Delia has money. Hank has a habit. You think he could ever get real with a woman he’s turned into something like food? No, dog. No respect there. No love, deep down where it counts. She’s his sugar momma, and when he gets access to the sugar bag with no one watching . . .” Nigel made a poof sound and gestured “gone” with his hands.
“Nigel.” I licked my lips. “You picked a dangerous time to tell me this.”
“When was a good time?” he hissed wrathfully. “When I suspected all this shit? You would have thought I was full of shit, that it was just more Creepy Nigel, shooting his mouth off to stir the pot. Or should I have ratted him out when I was sure, when I saw Delia give him money and I bumped into him at that stripper palace on Lombard making a score twenty minutes later? Then it was too late, because when the smoke cleared it would leave me in the shade just the same.”
Nigel had never been the kind of guy who believed people could change for the better, even when he was free, roaming the streets with a pocket full of cash and a woman on either arm. He was more of the mind that people became harder versions of what they always were to begin with, but not in a clean way, like an emerald emerging from a bigger wad of shit-colored rock, or a Darwinian weeding of a garden, where all the flowers and fountains were destroyed, leaving only a single tree with a utilitarian function. His new view of humanity was lower, I could tell. It was that the hard person in all of us just became more obvious.
“Time’s up,” I whispered. We watched each other.
“Thanks for the peanuts.”
I let my mind wander on the drive back and listened to it ramble through unrelated small rages, rumors I should have paid attention to and couldn’t remember clearly, suspicions I’d had but dismissed as random paranoia or flagrant assholery. On 205 North, I took the airport exit without thinking, distracted as I was, and drove on autopilot to the cell phone waiting area at the 82nd Street exit.
I pulled into a spot, and after I checked out the other cars, I angled the rearview to keep an eye on the en
trance. Then I lit a smoke. The view before me was a panoramic sweep of grassy field with low white buildings with blue doors off in the distance. To my right, in the direction of the terminals, a few planes and a handful of square little airport vehicles sat idle. The sunny day, as Suzanne had predicted, was ending, and the clouds moving in were fast and gray and low. The first scattering of drops were large and far apart. I didn’t leave the engine on for the heat. I didn’t turn on the radio, either.
I thought about Hank.
Nigel had admitted he was the kind of man to drive a wedge between people if there was even one small percentage point in it for him. That’s what all the mincing around had been about. But so was the between-the-lines admission that there was no angle in it for him, that he needed to point the light at this because it could disrupt his money flow if the wheels came off. I turned it this way and that. Happiness, when it came to other people, had always annoyed Nigel in a cynical way, but not to the point of going to the dark side like this. Prison couldn’t have driven him that crazy, either.
No, Nigel liked Delia. Not in a romantic way, though. Nigel was the kind of method mover who shied away from smart women in general. In fact, he was probably scared of Delia. He’d told me so more than once, but I’d always thought he was joking until now. The patter of the rain on the roof was loud. The tall grass in the field swayed and rippled in an unseen wind.
With our long alliance dragged from shaky ground to quicksand, Nigel would lie to me just as often as he lied to everyone else, but no matter how I turned it, I had a bad feeling he’d been telling me the truth. Nigel was definitely scared of me, too, and even in prison he wasn’t safe if I was pissed enough, and he knew it. So, Hank.
A Miata pulled in. Older woman, too heavy to be a fed. The cell phone waiting area had been designed for guys and gals with my lifestyle. Good view, one way in, no helicopters, close to the freeway. I’d fallen into the habit of sitting around there doing nothing almost a year ago, just to piss off Pressman and Dessel, and later to eat lunch because it was peaceful. That led me to the last part of my speculation.
Hank was probably exactly as guilty as Nigel claimed, and Delia had no idea. She would have told me. No, she was in love, the worst kind of love, crazy and deep and tragic, and that kind of love would make anyone blind. And I’d failed her, for all kinds of reasons, and I was failing her right then, at that exact moment. I’d been too wrapped up in my own shit to notice what was going on in her life and I still was. And I was going to continue failing her unless I did some highly inventive shit in the immediate future. Without the benefit of her insights and feedback—behind her back, even—and all while I was under surveillance and being followed by some shithead at the same time.
This was why people invented booze. I was supposed to go drop off my car and get drunk in Old Town, make a scene, leave my car. It was like the cosmos was smiling on me in a sad way.
A night on the town, when you’re supposed to seem like you’re spending the night on the town, partying with great abandon and being exactly like the worst possible you, does not start easily. Especially when you’re being followed by any number of people, all of them also possibly following each other as well.
I drove into Old Town and looked for a parking spot for a while, distracted and cursing, until I remember that I was supposed to park in my parking lot. More cursing. The lot was always full, so I bought an all-day ticket from the little robot kiosk, paid myself with my debit card, and idled while I dialed Delia and waited for her to pick up. It rang five times and went to voicemail three times in a row before she finally picked up.
“Working, dude,” she snapped. “Don’t tell me this is your one call from the pokey, ’cause if it fuckin’ is—”
“Move your car,” I snapped back. “Jesus. I’m in position for phase one of whatever we’re calling this, Operation Frozen Dog, or the Troubled Vato Conspiracy, or—”
She hung up.
A moment later, she bounded out of the shop, waved and blew a kiss at the ever watchful Flaco, who caught it and pressed it to his heart, then bounced my way. As she did her face hardened. When she stopped and rapped sharply on my window, I was almost afraid to roll it down. I was more afraid not to, so I did.
“Santiago told me that he accidentally ratted me out,” she said, in a flat way, like she was spoiling for a fight about it. “I don’t want to hear one damn thing about the chicken, Darby. Your borderline fucking with my wedding is pissing me off, so just shut your fuckin’ mouth.”
I stared.
“You’re talking with your face, dude,” she said coldly.
“Ah, man.” I rubbed my scalp. “You, ah, you got plans tonight? We can get loaded like the old days, play pool. Hit the dives that haven’t been closed down.”
“You’ll have to call one of your other friends, dear.”
“Ouch.” Then I remembered her annual health food kick. “Wait. You can watch me get loaded and make fun of me. We can hit a wheatgrass enema place and, ah, fuck it. Move your fuckin’ car.”
She did. I pulled into the vacant spot and got out, then stood there for a moment, thinking. I was being watched, I was sure, so I tried to decide what I would normally do. I’d just visited someone in prison. Most people would get hammered after that. But where? And with whom? Without Delia, I was coming up short on drinking partners. Chase was out. Santiago was working. Getting blasted with the Armenian was never a good idea. Suzanne was gone. Getting hammered in the Rocket seemed depressing. One by one, I ticked my options off the list. The light rain that had been falling on and off for the last half hour turned back on and made my mind up for me.
With grim resolve, I started walking toward Burnside. When I got there, I crossed and drifted into downtown proper, traveling under the awnings to stay relatively dry, and as I did my mood lifted and I started to get into the spirit of things. There were a few dark, smelly bars left between Second and Fifth, the kinds of places with old man drinkers, women with big hair, that kind of thing. The Olympian was one such establishment. I ducked in without a backward glance. Night was just coming around as I did.
The inside was suitably grim. It smelled like old beer, BO, and burnt plastic. I took a seat at the bar and motioned at the bartender. Some kind of rubber band around my heart popped loose at the sight of her. She was old school, a punk gal with bleached hair and a sore on her lip, hard and lean in the way long years make a body, the way yuppies go to the gym to achieve. The New Portland bartenders, who all looked like executives at Urban Outfitters or accountants at REI, made me irritable and cheap.
“ID?” she asked. She shrugged and pointed up at the camera at the end of the bottles.
“Last time I was here you guys were camera-free.” I dug out my wallet and passed her my license.
“Boss is afraid we’re stealing olives. Mostly ’cause we are.” She passed it back. “What’ll it be?”
“Dunno.” I surveyed the rows and rows of options. “I have to get half wasted tonight. But I’m gonna sort of sneak up on it.”
“A long slow burn,” she said, nodding.
“Yeah. I also have to stay halfway sane through the whole process. So, hmm.”
She turned and looked at the bottles, too. “I’d say either go top shelf or all the way down to the well. Nothing in between.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. Top shelf, you run out of money before you puke. All the way down at the bottom the shit’s so bad you don’t even want to drink it, so same difference.”
“Christ. One more philosophy that would backfire on me in a wicked way. But I see what you’re saying.”
“You celebrating anything? Good or bad? I mean, what’s your deal?” She turned back, more bored than interested.
“I’m . . . fuck. I guess I’m . . .” I trailed off. She nodded and turned back to the bar, took down the Jim Beam, poured a shot, and set it in front of me. Then she poured a beer back of something watery from the tap.
“Beam. The exac
t middle of nowhere whiskey. They should advertise a weedy highway median in their Rolling Stone ads, but no one ever does the kind of shit that makes sense anymore.” She pointed at the beer. “Crap.”
“Let the games begin.” I picked up the shot glass and drained it, slid it back and gestured for another. While she poured, I took my phone out and looked at it.
The tattoo industry standard was the iPhone. It took great pictures, you could check your email, social media, do Google image searches, everything. I had no email, social media was a bad idea on many levels, and using Google images was too close to cheating for me. My phone was the kind that Cricket gave out for free. It had many interesting features, too. Flashlight, for instance. It took pictures, too, and I even knew how to do it. I hit the little camera button and then hit the little reverse button at the top of the screen, then set it down on the bar and dug a twenty out of my wallet, put it down next to the new shot.
“These cameras,” I said. “Guy can’t count drinks with pour spouts? You got ’em on every bottle.”
“You’d be surprised how a bartender can run a burn on a place,” she said. “Water the bottles, swap contents. We had a guy a little while back who would put his own bottles into the rotation, skim the money out of the till as it went in. No way to bust that move without a camera.”
“No shit. Nothing is sacred.”
“Way shit. You get ten of your own bottles in rotation, easy couple grand a month.”
I looked at my glass. Then I looked at the camera. I drank and flipped the camera off. The bartender snorted.
“I guess one more of these little beers,” I said. I drained the one I had and then leaned into the bar, picked up my phone. Without moving much, I took five pictures of the room behind me. I’d been turned away from the door for long enough for all kinds of people to file in and take a seat. While I’d been chatting up the bartender, the lone waitress had been busy.
