Rough Justice

by Andrew Peterson

  And my shoulder brushed against another ledger. It tottered as I turned to it, fell from the shelf. Landed with a thud that made the floor shudder. It splayed open on two pages filled from top to bottom in a cramped, careful hand, and while I stared down at it, the door was pulled open.

  Then I raised my eyes, still staring, into the fierce eyes staring back.

  18

  “I would have thought you had more brains, Mr. Wells.”

  I sat on the edge of the desk, closed my eyes, pinched the bridge of my nose.

  When I looked up, Celia Cooper was picking up the ledger on the floor. She looked at me over the top of it. She clapped it shut. Dumped it heavily back on a shelf.

  “Find anything?” she asked me.

  I shook my head.

  Her eyes flared. Her lips were white. An angry red flush appeared on her cheeks in splotches. Her fists were clenched at her sides. Her arms trembled and her eyes glistened with raging tears.

  “I did not deserve this,” she said. She managed to keep her voice even. “I did not deserve this from you.”

  I could not speak at all. I nodded.

  “I talked to you,” she went on. “Even after you killed my friend, I did what I could. I tried to help you. I did not deserve this … violation of … of my rights.”

  I stood up, put my hands in my pockets. “Miss Cooper, I didn’t mean to violate—”

  “You didn’t mean!” Now the red came up into her cheeks completely. Now the tears were brimming over, the white lips quivering. “You didn’t mean to … to kill Thad. You didn’t mean to break into my property. Suppose I call the police and explain to them what you didn’t mean to do.”

  “Miss Cooper, I was looking for a woman, an employee of yours named Mikki Snow. I’d heard—”

  “Oh!” Celia Cooper brought her clenched fist to her mouth. The tears spilled down her cheeks. She shook her head angrily. “What was Mikki Snow to you?” she said.

  “She might’ve—”

  “Did you know her?” Her face was contorted, her voice was savage.

  “No, but—”

  “Had you ever even met her?”

  “I thought she—”

  “Because I did. I knew her. I knew her very well.” She ran her hand up through the graying ringlets of her hair. She shook her head—and her eyes were drawn, as mine had been, to the photograph on the wall. She looked at it as she spoke, and I thought about the young woman in it and her soft, sad, courageous smile. “I took her out of the shelters when she’d been raped and beaten,” Celia said. “And I sat on her bed while she nearly died of the drugs she took for … for some kind of stupid, stupid comfort. And I held her while she vomited again and again and while she was racked and twisted with convulsions. I did all that.”

  She turned from the picture, faced me. I couldn’t look into those angry eyes anymore. I bowed my head.

  Celia Cooper’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “And I found the intelligence in there and … and the spirit of the woman—still in there after everything, Mr. Wells. And I put her on the track to being free, to being … somebody again, and now …”

  I glanced at her. “Now what? What happened?”

  She covered her face with her hand, turned from me. “Oh, go away,” she said. “You’re not even worth calling the police over. They’ll take care of you soon enough. I don’t know … who you are, or why you did what you did … but you’ve brought nothing to this house but bad luck and tragedy and …” Now when she faced me, those deep, soft brown eyes of hers had gone cold and black. “I can’t forgive you. I tried. I can’t. I never will. I want nothing but to see you punished for what you did, for what you’re still doing. Go on!” She flung a hand out, accidentally knocking a stack of folders off a shelf to the floor. “Go on, and search for your dirt. If you can find it, then find it and try to save yourself, try to use it as a reason for killing Thad.” She leaned toward me, her cheeks dry now, her gaze terrible. “But I’ll tell you something, Mr. Wells. I’ll tell you something that’s true. The world is a very ugly place, a very awful place, and all corrupt—but there is such a thing as justice. And if I’ve done some things to keep this place alive, if I’ve made some deals and learned some ropes so that my brother and sister human beings didn’t have to live without hope and shelter and dignity—then believe me, I have paid the price for that, paid it and paid it. And no matter what you find out, no matter how you use it or twist it or turn it around, you’ll pay for what you did, too. You’ll pay in full. I’ll see to it. Now, get out of here.”

  She waved her arm at me. Like shooing a bee. But I didn’t move. I said: “What happened? What happened to Mikki Snow?”

  For a long moment, she just stared at me. Then she swallowed hard and said softly: “She’s gone.” Her voice broke. “She’s gone forever.”

  “Why?”

  Moving away from me, moving to the wall, to the picture on the wall, she made a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. How should I know? Maybe because … she wanted me to be more … or better … than I am.”

  “Do you know where she went?”

  “Oh yes. Oh yes, I know.” She leaned against the wall, her eyes only inches from the photograph. “I just got back from there,” she said softly. “I was the only one they knew to call.”

  “From where? Who called you?”

  “The police. They found her in an SRO on Thirty-second Street. They wanted me to identify her.”

  “In jail?”

  “No. At the morgue.” She reached up, gently touched the photo’s frame. “It was an overdose, they said.”

  19

  I went back to my apartment. I sat in the chair at my desk. I smoked a cigarette. The Scotch bottle was on the kitchenette counter. I eyed it from across the room.

  The long last hour of the afternoon drifted toward evening. The sky began to darken at the window. I sat. I smoked. I tried to think. I could not think.

  There was nothing left to think about, no way left for me to go. If Mikki Snow had ever been a lead, she was gone now. If her death of an overdose in a fourth-class dive meant anything, I couldn’t figure out what. Maybe it happened the way Celia Cooper said. Maybe Snow had killed herself because she’d become disillusioned with her savior, with Cooper. Maybe she’d found some sort of scam at Cooper House, or simply witnessed the compromises Cooper had made with the city. Or maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe the pull of the drug had just become too much. But whatever it was, it didn’t really seem to matter. None of it explained why Thad Reich had been in my apartment. None of it gave him a motive for attacking me. And none of it gave me a reason to kill him.

  The world is an awful place, said Celia Cooper, but there is such a thing as justice.

  A man was dead, after all. Someone had to pay.

  I reached for the ashtray, jabbed out my cigarette. I lit another. Kept studying the whiskey bottle on the counter. After a while, I got up, wandered over to it. Picked it up by the neck, read the label. It was Scotch, all right. I set it down and walked to the window.

  The sky was purple now. The air was cool and easy. The store lights glared up from the street below. Cars raced past—not many, yellow cabs mostly. The sidewalks were busier: lots of people went strolling by. Couples with their arms linked, women walking dogs, men with their hands in their pockets, their newspapers under their arms—all of them passed along, unconcerned, content with their spring Sunday on the island of Manhattan.

  I pressed my cigarette to my lips and watched them go. I knew they were not really the way they seemed to me just then. They were worried, most of them, afraid, obsessed, even half-mad—they were New Yorkers, weren’t they? But from where I stood, they seemed a serene fraternity: the brotherhood of those who had not killed anyone, who lived pretty much on the right side of the law. It felt like a million years since I’d been one of them. I never would be one of them again.

  The door buzzer sounded. A coppery taste of fear came into my mouth. The buzzer soun
ded again.

  I went to the intercom.

  “Who is it?”

  A woman’s voice answered through the static: “It’s me. Back in your life.”

  I put my hand on the release, but didn’t press it. I almost called down again. Then I let her in.

  I stood at the open door, finished my cigarette while I waited for the elevator. Finally, I heard it rumble to the floor, ease to a stop. The doors slid open.

  Kathy Reich stepped out.

  She wore red and yellow this time. Expensive stuff: a scarlet skirt down to her ankles, a yellow sweater with a cowl neck. A gold choker gleamed at her throat. A small black leather purse was strung over her shoulder.

  She turned in the hall to face me, arced her hand on her wrist by way of salute. I arced my hand back.

  Her glossed lips curled as she slowly stepped toward me. “I figure it this way,” she said. “Either you’re telling the truth, or you have testicles the size of bowling balls. Which is it?”

  “Tough to choose.”

  “I mean, you don’t go to a guy’s wife, for Christ’s sake, after you’ve murdered him. I mean, it’s pretty lame: Hi, I killed your husband, could you give me a hand beating the rap. Unless you’re a criminal mastermind or something, and you don’t exactly strike me as Professor Moriarty. I mean, no offense, but even Mr. Wizard is, like, stretching it.”

  She leaned against the wall.

  “Why don’t you come in?” I said.

  With a glance over my shoulder into the apartment, she shook her head. “I don’t think so. I mean, I know he’s not still in there, but …”

  “Okay. Sure.”

  She took a deep breath, avoided my gaze. “You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?”

  I gave her one. She watched me through the smoke as I lit it for her.

  “Thanks,” she said. She plucked it from her lips, held it upright. “I’m giving them up. That’s why I’m not carrying mine, I mean. Obviously, I’m not giving them up to the point of not smoking them, but I figure at a time like this the stress’ll probably kill me before the smoke does. I figure if I can sort of cut down through the grief stages—like a pack for Denial, a half-pack during Anger—by Acceptance, I should be home free. Anyway, if I blow it, who can blame me, so it’s a pretty safe arena. Thad had a lover, you know. Not that that has anything to do with the cigarettes, but it might explain a few things for you. I don’t know what. But I thought I’d tell you.” She dragged on her cigarette from the corner of her mouth, watching me.

  I started to speak. Behind me, the phone rang. Kathy Reich went on.

  “I mean, he wasn’t exactly Stanley Kowalski, in the first place, don’t get me wrong …”

  The phone rang.

  “… he didn’t stand outside on the street screaming ‘Kathy, Kathy’ all night, but I mean, Jesus, now and then I used to get what we politely call laid, thank you very much …”

  The phone rang. I didn’t even glance back at it. I didn’t want her to stop.

  “… not that that was any great shakes, but it had a certain intimacy to it because, of course, it was sex, which is what that’s like, but after Cooper House …”

  The phone rang.

  “… conjugal-bliss-wise we were at ground zero. I said, ‘Thad, you don’t have to trade IBM to turn me on, I’ll put out, I’m your wife, for Christ’s sake,’ but after a while, I mean, comes the dawn, you start to get wise …. Shouldn’t you answer that?”

  The phone rang. I hesitated, then turned and headed for the desk. The phone began to ring again—but stopped in the middle of the bell. My hand fell onto the receiver. The phone was silent. I turned back to her.

  She was not leaning on the wall now. She was standing straight. She was holding her purse in one hand in front of her, as if for protection. She was staring at the floor of my apartment.

  “I’m standing here telling the man who crushed my husband’s windpipe about my sex life,” she said. “Good, Kath. Nice going. Is that where he died?” She gestured at the floor with her cigarette.

  I glanced at the spot. It was right where he died. “I … I don’t …”

  “Take it slow, Wells. One word at a time.”

  “I don’t know exactly. I was kind of dazed from the fight.”

  “Right there, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whew. I’m glad I don’t have to live here. Bet it’s a blast.”

  “It does have its bad moments.”

  She took another long look at the floor, then nodded to herself, as if she were ready to leave.

  Quickly, I moved back to her. “Did he tell you?” I asked her. “Did he tell you he was having an affair?”

  “What? Oh. You want to hear the rest of this? Yeah, he did. That’s the whole point, in fact. That’s what I came here to tell you. We had this whole big fight about it.” She shook her head, smiling wryly. “At this point, you probably think I need a psychiatrist. Actually, I’ve thought of a psychiatrist, but then I might have to come to terms with my parents—”

  The phone on my desk started ringing again.

  “I mean, they grow potatoes, for Christ’s sake. They live in Idaho. I talk Kafka, they talk spuds. Jesus.”

  The phone rang.

  “What is this with your phone?” she said. “Are you taking a survey?”

  “You had a fight,” I prompted. “He told you he was having an affair.”

  The phone rang.

  “Look, maybe you better answer that. We could do this another time. I don’t even know why I … Yeah, that’s it. He wanted to go out, and I said, look, you know, once in a while …”

  The phone rang.

  “… and he … he said … he told me he loved someone else …”

  “Did he tell you—”

  The phone rang.

  “—who it was?” I asked.

  Kathy Reich stared past me at the phone on the desk as it rang and rang. “Well, yeah,” she murmured. “Sure, that’s what hurt. I mean, another guy, that punk, that Mark Herd … I could’ve stood for that, in some ways. But Celia. Celia Cooper, that self-righteous—”

  The phone rang.

  “Look,” she said, “I’ve gotta … I’ve gotta go …” She started moving toward the elevator. “I’m a little confused, I thought I could help. I need some quality personal time here …” She pressed the call button. The car had not gone. The doors slid open at once.

  The phone rang again.

  “Why did you tell me this?” I asked her. “What does it have to do with me?”

  She paused, halfway into the car, her hand holding the door’s bumper.

  “That’s what we were arguing about. That he was going out. I mean, I thought he was going out to meet her, to meet Celia. But it turns out he was coming here, he must have come right here. That was the last time I ever saw him. The last time, and I was screaming and crying and accusing him—the whole bit.”

  The phone rang. She laughed: a startling, delighted little trill.

  “What a life, huh?” she said. “It’s a riot.” She stepped into the elevator. The doors slid shut. She was gone.

  The phone rang.

  “Shut up, goddamn it,” I said. “Damn!”

  I stepped angrily across the room and grabbed it. “What do you want?”

  “Wells! Finally!” I knew the voice right off: soft, deep, slightly hoarse, slightly southern. “This is Emma Walsh.”

  “Emma.” I dropped down into my desk chair. I looked out the window. The sky had turned a deep shade of purple, washed by the city lights below. Somewhere in the distance, a siren cried.

  “I hear you’ve been taking it pretty hard for me,” I said.

  “Jesus, Wells. How’d you get that?”

  I laughed. “A perky confidential source.”

  “That woman in Accounting with the legs, I’ll bet. I thought she’d been hanging around the door. Well, I did what I could. But, Wells …” She had to force herself to say it. “It’s o
ut of my hands now.”

  I felt something drop inside me. Like the elevator had gone down too fast. I listened to the siren wailing as Emma tried to speak again.

  I managed to speak first. “So you mean I’m suspended?”

  I heard her take a deep breath. I heard her let it out in a long sigh.

  “No. No, it’s not that. Christ, I wish it were that …. Oh, hell, John, I’m so sorry. It just came over the scanner.” She paused. Then: “It’s Watts. He’s issued a warrant for your arrest. You’ve been charged with murder.”

  Outside, the siren wailed louder.

  20

  In another second, the sound peaked. I saw the red light of the police flasher dance over my windowpane. The siren wound down, died.

  “Wells?” It was Emma. “Are you still there?”

  I laid the receiver on the desk. Stood up. Went to the window. I looked down in the street.

  “Wells.” Emma’s voice came, tinny, from the receiver. “Listen to me. We’re going to stick by you all the way.”

  There were two of them out there. An unmarked car and a cruiser. They pulled up to the curb outside my apartment and parked.

  “We’re gonna get you a good lawyer,” said Emma. “Raise hell. Get bail. You won’t have to wait out at Rikers, that’s for certain.”

  I worry about you, Wells.

  The door to the unmarked car swung open and out stepped Lieutenant Tom Watts. The cruiser doors popped on either side. Two uniformed patrolmen rolled out.

  You could be blown away resisting arrest.

  Even in the early dark, I recognized the enormous shape of one of the patrolmen. A slug named Rankin, Watts’s hired troll. It was a good guess the other one wasn’t Saint Francis either.

  Emma’s mechanical voice kept coming to me. “We’re going to make this our crusade, John, I promise you. We won’t let them get away with it. No bargaining, nothing. We’re going to make them prove this thing in a court of law …”

  You could hang yourself in a holding cell. Or Rikers—oh, that bad, bad.

  Watts paused on the sidewalk to speak to his two patrolmen. Then he and the third cop came marching into my building. Rankin stayed outside. He leaned against his cruiser. He hooked his thumbs in his belt. He lifted his eyes. He gazed directly up at me. He smiled.