A Dead Man Speaks

by Lisa Jones Johnson

  Laurel

  How did my life get so fucked.

  “Now this is the nicest unit we have in the building. Sunny and quiet. That is what you wanted. Miss…excuse me, Miss?

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.” I looked around the small bare apartment: greenish walls, linoleum floors, and a cubbyhole for a bedroom. Nothing like our apartment with the wide sunny windows facing the narrow Manhattan street. No smell of flowers drifting in on summer days and burning leaves in the fall. No little oasis in the middle of the craziness that was New York. Our refuge. Away from the past, shut off from the future, just existing in the now of the moments of our lives. For that point in time, now gone. How did my life fall apart? When did it start, or was it always like that?

  “If you’d like the apartment, it’ll be first month’s rent and last month’s as a security deposit.”

  “How much is the rent again?”

  “Five-fifty a month, plus utilities.”

  I added the numbers in my head quickly, at that rate I could afford three months before I had to move again. My life would never be the same, running now.

  “So would you like the apartment?”

  My life was fucked. Running, always running. “Yes, I’ll take it.” New faces, but none of them his. None would ever be his again.

  “Have you been in town long?”

  Why didn’t this woman shut up? Couldn’t she see that I just wanted to be alone? “No.”

  “Where are you coming from?”

  My head throbbed now. I kept seeing him. Everywhere. “A lot of places. Everywhere.”

  “Well I think you’ll like it here. We’re a small town, but there’s things to do. I’d be happy to introduce you to some of the other people in the building. I think you’ll find them a real friendly bunch.”

  I’d never be able to stop running. Never. “No. Thank you. I’ll be fine on my own.” Thoughts, all tumbling on top of each other, collided and filled my head. The first time Clive made love to me. I remember wondering to myself, why do I feel like this? I’m in control. I’m the one who seduced him. So why do I feel like I’m the one who has been drawn into this abyss of bottomless feelings and sleepless nights of thoughts wrapped around another’s face? Why do I feel like this? And I remember clearly thinking. Because I love him.

  I knew the first time I saw Clive that he was different. I think it was in his eyes. A look that told me that life had dealt him some blows, but that he’d come out okay. I understood the hunger in his soul. A craving so deep that once unleashed, I knew it would swallow up anyone or anything in its path. I knew that someday the world would know about Clive January.

  I used to laugh a lot. people never understood why. Sometimes I didn’t understand either. I guess my first reaction was to laugh. Even when perhaps I should’ve cried. I laughed. So I laughed when I found out that he’d left Hendersonville on that crazy and sad night. I wasn’t really surprised, anything as wildly delicious as he was couldn’t stay in Hendersonville.

  I’d known a lot of Clives in my day. Sure of themselves, but not really; strong, but not really; cold, but not at all. I know that’s why I jumped on Clive. He was my other half. The blue of my black. Even then, I knew that our souls would find each other again. Then when I saw him in that small town in Maine, I wondered if I’d changed. To him, I mean. I remember looking in the mirror. Same face, same smile. To me. But to him. I wondered. Pieces of thoughts floated into my mind—his marriage, which should have been our marriage. Maybe if I’d never left, things would have been different, but who would have known that it would have taken so long? Even if I’d called him while it was happening, perhaps then he would have waited…maybe, but then maybe not.

  The thoughts stopped as abruptly as they’d began, washing up memories like stones on a beach. Only to be thrust out to sea again. I closed the door behind the woman and walked out into the street. Another anonymous town. Like so many I’d been to before. Only now there was no turning back. No laughter now.

  * * *

  Detective Bob

  I checked the address that Yolanda had given me—480 West Twenty-eighth Street. Yeah, this was it. Nice building. Discreet. Modern, but not too new. On one of those quiet, narrow streets in Chelsea. Doorman keeping watch. Perfect to hole up with a mistress in.

  I wondered how much I’d get out of the doorman. Didn’t look like the talkative kind. I’d use my “we’re all from the same clan” talk with him, see how far it’d get me. “Nice day, huh?”

  He kinda shrugged.

  “Yeah, a day like this makes me wish I was twenty years younger.”

  He shrugged again.

  I knocked a cigarette out of the pack. I had noticed the ashes by the ground. A smoker for sure. “Smoke?”

  “Can’t on the job.”

  I lit my cigarette. “Now ain’t that a bitch. What’s the world coming to, seems like you can’t do anything you want anymore.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  The first whole sentence I’d gotten out of him.

  “A lot of folks move in and outta here?”

  “No more than usual.”

  I tossed the cigarette. “Yeah, I bet this is the type of place where all the rich cats put their girlfriends.”

  He smiled, but that was all. At least it got a rise outta him. “You could say that.”

  Bingo. Now I could work it.

  But just as I was about to get some more out of him, an overweight, overdressed New York matron type barged in between us. “Henry…”

  He perked up to attention.

  “I thought I asked you to tell the mailman to have that woman’s mail forwarded.”

  “I did. Twice, in fact.”

  “Well I don’t know why I’m still getting her bills.” She dug around in the bottom of her purse and shoved a handful of letters to him.

  He rolled his eyes, but not too much, as he took the letters. “I’ll take care of it Mrs. Newman.”

  “Yes, you do that, and tell that mailman that I don’t want to see another piece of her mail.” The woman harrumphed loudly as she maneuvered her way out of the door. Shit, one look at the doorman and I knew I wasn’t getting another thing out of him now. Son-of-a-bitch. But I’d try anyway. I didn’t want to have to show the badge, you usually got more if they didn’t know you were fishing around for information.

  “So uh…what were you saying?”

  “Look buddy, I really don’t have time to chat, I gotta take care of the rounds.” He tossed the letters on the bench, muttering to himself, “Overstuffed bitch.”

  “Yeah, I know you wanted to give her what for.”

  He smiled. “Listen, do me a favor, toss these for me. I can’t leave, and I want to get the shit outta my face.”He handed me the bills the woman had given him. Damn. Pretty clear this was the end of the conversation.

  “Sure, no problem.” I dug in my jacket and handed him a cigarette. “For the road.”

  “Thanks.”

  Shit. I stuffed the letters in my pocket and walked down the street. Next time I’d have to show the badge. There’d be another doorman later on when this one got off his shift. But this time, I’d have to be direct. This Columbo crap was for the birds.

  I shoved the letters in a trashcan. The breeze blew one of them off the top of the pile of trash. And as I was about to pick it up, I froze. LAUREL DAVENPORT, clear as day on the letter. I dove for the rest, LAUREL DAVENPORT, N.Y. Telephone, LAUREL DAVENPORT, CCNY, LAUREL DAVENPORT, addressee unknown.

  * * *

  “Hey, Scoffo, I got a lead on the January case.”

  “’Bout time, I heard Captain telling Lindsay that your ass was out to lunch on this one.”

  “Yeah, well fuck Captain, cause I’m getting close, real close.”

  Scoffo, a big, hairy, red-faced Italian who looked like he never gave a damn about anything, grabbed the letters from me.

  “So whatcha got?”

  “Letters from his girlfriend’s place.” />
  “Which one? Word is that he had a bunch of ’em.”

  “Yeah maybe, but I think this was the main chick.”

  “Oh yeah, and how do you know that?”

  “I got my sources.”

  Scoffo shook his head. “You and your got damned sources.”

  “Just run a check on the phone bill. Every number she called. Get me names and addresses. I wanna record of all her calls for the past six months. Also get me everything you can dig up on her: school records, priors, marriage, parents, kids, everything. I wanna know more about her than she knows about herself. “

  “Whoooo, going big time, huh? That’ll take a few days.”

  “Then I guess you better start now.”

  * * *

  The laugh track from the Dick Van Dyke Show filled up the lonely corners of my bedroom. And I poured myself another drink. Dark brown, Jack Daniels. When I first started drinking, it used to sting my tongue, just a little. But now it went down just right, smooth. Numbing every part of my body, even the voices in my mind.

  I turned up the volume. Laura Petrie was on, my girl, she reminded me of Margie, same perkiness, dark hair, cute little bod.

  Sometimes I used to think that I could have a life like theirs, a little problem here and there, but by the end of the thirty minutes it was all right. Laura and Rob would be just as much in love as ever. A commercial came on so I turned the volume back down. But I never clicked away from the show, not while Laura was on. Margie…I wondered what she was doing now. Was she fuckin’ somebody or was she sitting alone watching our show, like me, trying to remember the good times?

  I loved her. But I was afraid to marry her. Maybe afraid, I’d end up like my dad, and she’d end up like Mama, unhappy and alone. The thought of ending up like my dad had been eating away at me a lot these days. Maybe it was ’cause he’d been sick a lot. I couldn’t even feel no sympathy for him, even though he was sufferin’. I kept remembering the way he made me suffer when I was a kid. Nothin’ I ever did was good enough. So now it was his turn. But I was afraid. Afraid. Was father really like son? Was I like that fat racist bastard who made me miserable and everybody around him, was I him?

  I couldn’t think no more. I was so tired, tired of the January case and I wasn’t half finished with it. Tired of my life. I had to make some changes, but how? I’d been a cop for twenty years. What else could I do?

  I closed my eyes, trying to see Margie’s face behind the darkness. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t see or feel anything. Suddenly, the room was quiet. I couldn’t hear the TV, or feel my hard bed under my ass. Shit, God damn it. He was doing it again. He was taking over me. But this time I was gonna fight back. Damn you, Clive January, you can’t take away my life, my dreams, and impose your own on me…but I couldn’t fight him. He was too strong. My eyes were his, my breath his. I was him. Again. But this time it was different than before. When he’d let me in the last time, I felt everything just as he had the first time, the emotions, the people everything happening in real time. Now I could feel him receding. I was a silent eavesdropper as he turned back the pages in his life and remembered as it had been.

  * * *

  Detective Bob looking through Clive’s eyes as Clive remembers…

  “When did you get here?”

  I was looking at her again, Laurel. She was standing in the doorway of the apartment. Our apartment. Every piece of furniture, picture, pillow, candle, all looked familiar. I bought everything: the rich chocolate velvet couches, the Indian silk pillows, the teak side tables, the large brightly colored pieces of art that I’d found in the offbeat Soho galleries. This is where our lives intersected. Nothing else mattered when I was here, but us. The way we’d always been, together yet alone, trapped by a patchwork of the past that always seemed to darken the present.

  She leaned down and kissed me. I took out my wallet and knocked two crisp hundred dollar bills onto the table. Then reached into my pocket, and carefully removed a small white envelope. Folding each of the hundred dollar bills in half, and pouring lines of coke in the creased bills.

  Laurel looked over my shoulder. “I thought you were going to cool it on that.”

  I ignored her. My heart felt twisted with pain. I barely looked up as I said softly, “She’s back.”

  “Who?” She nonchalantly threw her coat on a chair.

  “Ma.”

  She turned me around, forcefully, worry in her eyes. “Your mother?! How the hell did she find you after all these years?!”

  I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t do anything. But I had to tell her. She was the only one who’d understand. “I don’t know. Yesterday I was on the phone, and Monique opened the door, and she was there…”

  I closed my eyes, trying to blot out the memory. Only I couldn’t. I could still see Ma’s face, the small eyes, harder than I remembered. The thin hands, calloused, holding my child in her hands. I was ready to explode. Laurel was sitting next to me, stroking my head gently.

  “What did you say to her?”

  “I told her to get the hell out! What did you think? I told her that she wasn’t my mother, that I didn’t know her!”

  “Oh Clive, baby…Clive…”

  I’d lost control. The past had taken over my present again. I didn’t know what to do anymore, so I lay in her lap, letting her kiss me, trying to make it better.

  “You’ve just got to make sure that she doesn’t come around anymore. All she’ll do is upset you.”

  “I know, but I’m not home that much. How do I know what’s happening when I’m out?”

  “Tell Monique not to let her in. She should at least be able to do that.” Even after all these years, she still said Monique’s name with bitterness. Anger that Monique had the place by default, which should have been hers. But in reality, she had the place even if no one knew but us.

  I couldn’t think of anything but Ma holding my child. The same hands that had slapped me down, holding my child.

  “I don’t know what to do. I told Monique and everyone else that Ma had died years ago, and now she shows up on my doorstep.”

  I sat up, tilting the coke creased in the hundred dollar bill into my nose. Letting it linger for a second before I inhaled it sharply. C’mon the feeling’s got to come. The feeling of peace, settling over me. But all I could think about was Ma. Laurel held my hand now.

  “That bitch.” I got up, roaming around the room. I had to do something. “I’m getting out. I’m selling the business and getting out.”

  “Clive, what are you talking about, all of this because your mother found you, throwing away everything, because of her!”

  I walked over to the window, looking out onto the tree-lined street. Wishing that I could bury myself in the cool green canopy of leaves below me. “It’s not just that. It’s my whole life. I don’t feel like it’s going anywhere anymore. I don’t love my wife. I barely know my daughter, and now this. I’ve got to start over somewhere else, as someone else.”

  “So that’s it. Clive’s running again. Just like when you left Hendersonville. So what about us? Are you gonna run away from me again? Well, are you?!”

  I didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t want to fight with her anymore. “I’m not running from you. This doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

  She was about to say something, but I cut her off.

  “The only reason I’m telling you is that I need to use this address. I need to have some mail sent here that I don’t want at the office or at home.”

  “What are you doing, Clive?”

  “Business. Just business.” I swallowed. My throat was dry. Parched. Coke did that to me. I needed to drink something. Mellow out the high. “I have some new accounts, and I need to have the paperwork sent here. That’s all. Just business.”

  “And who do you think I am? One of those bimbos you fuck when you think I’m not around? I’m not stupid, Clive. I know what you’re talking about doing!”

  I turned away from her. It always came u
p when she was mad. The other women. Like she was supposed to be the only other woman.

  “And if it’s the same thing that you got into with Red, leave it alone. Isn’t it enough that Red died? Do you want the same thing to happen to you!”

  “I can handle it now. It was different then. We didn’t know what we were doing. We got in over our heads. But things are different now. That was ten years ago.”

  “But those people never change. You know that. What makes you think that anything has changed? So they went after the white boy that time. How do you know it won’t be you this time?”

  I didn’t want to hear this. The memory of Red and what could have been was still too real. But I had to do it. I had to. I couldn’t let my life fall into the spiral of my past again. I had to get out and this was the only way.

  “What about Andrew? Is he involved?”

  I couldn’t let her see my face. She could read too much without me having to say a thing.

  “Well, is he? You know you can’t trust him.”

  “Look, just leave the mail out so I can take it when I come over.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  She stood in front of me, but my heart was hard. I wasn’t changing my mind. Even she couldn’t stop me now. I was not getting trapped in a situation that I couldn’t get out of anymore. This time I was making the move first.

  * * *

  “Robbbbbb!”

  Back in my own place, Laura Petrie sounded exasperated at Rob. Shit, I didn’t know how much time had passed. Couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, but it seemed longer.

  “Damn you, Clive January! Get the hell out of my life!” I clicked off the television. I didn’t even care that Laura was still on. I felt like crying. Hell. But I knew it wouldn’t do any good. He’d just keep coming. And the thing that scared the shit outta me was that each time I could feel him getting stronger, coming in easier and faster. My right hand shook now. Sometimes I couldn’t stop it. And the nausea was getting worse and worse every time. It’s like he was suckin’ the life outta me, little by little each time he came. Totally knocking me out of the way. I had to get to the bottom of this case. Otherwise, I’d lose my life to him just as sure as he did to that killer. “Damn you, Clive January!”