Citizen Vince

by Jess Walter

  The elevator doors close on David’s worried face and Vince pushes the button for the second floor. He gets off and walks casually down the hall to the stairwell, goes inside, and climbs down the stairs, past the first floor, to the basement. The door opens on a concrete-floored hallway. Vince walks until he reaches a custodial closet, opens it, and finds a pair of coveralls. He slips into them and keeps walking through a door to the loading dock in back of the building, grabs a huge box of toilet paper, and holds it on his shoulder, above his face. He emerges on a ramp in the back of the building, climbs it to the street level, and is about to cross the street with the box when an unmarked police car squeals around the corner. As it passes, Vince sees the big mustached detective, Phelps, and another cop in the front seat. They roll past and Vince walks casually across the street, angles into Riverfront Park, sets the toilet paper on a park bench, unzips his coveralls, steps out of them, and walks calmly through the park.

  IN HIS SMALL office, beneath a diploma from Fordham and a handful of framed photos of himself with acquitted gangsters, Benny DeVries seems more relaxed and cocky than he was the night Dupree questioned him on the street. Dupree takes the chair across from Benny’s desk and thanks the lawyer for seeing him again.

  “This shouldn’t take long. I just have a couple of follow-up questions.”

  Benny looks impatiently at his watch. “I told you everything I know.”

  Dupree shakes his head. “Well, no. You didn’t.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That night you said you hadn’t seen him—”

  Benny leans back, smiling, entertained. “Yes.”

  “—I asked you to call me if you saw Vince?”

  “And I said I would. Look—”

  “It just hit me this morning. I said Vince, not Marty. I never told you that his new name was Vince. You said you hadn’t heard from him since the trial and yet you knew his name in the program was Vince.”

  Benny DeVries stares at him for a moment, and then breaks into a broad smile. “Yeah. That’s funny. I mean…it’s worthless: I could have inferred that you were talking about Marty, or maybe you used the name Vince earlier in the conversation. But yeah…that’s pretty good.”

  Dupree leans forward and makes his pitch. “Look, Benny, the last thing I want to do is drop out of the sky and cause you a bunch of trouble.”

  “Trouble,” Benny repeats, the smile still on his face.

  “I just thought we should talk once more before this gets to the prosecutor or the bar association—”

  The smile grows. “The bar association!”

  “See, I might be able to help you out if you tell me where Vince is, but you gotta do it now, before the shit starts to rain down.”

  Benny laughs, then lights a cigarette, still smiling. “You really need to get yourself a bad cop.” He draws on the cigarette. “Now…what’s your name again?”

  “Dupree.”

  “Okay, Detective Dupree. First, let’s assume that I had seen our friend and I lied to you about it. My dick will climb out of my pants, grow wings, and fly across this room before you find a prosecutor in New York to wade into the issues of privilege and charge me on something as small as this. Number one. Two, the prosecutors wherever the fuck you’re from—assuming they walk upright—don’t have jurisdiction. And three, as far as the bar association, I can give you the phone number for the head of the disciplinary committee, if you want, because I was the best man at his fucking wedding!

  “And even if you could charge me, it would be your word against mine, and in the end, it doesn’t even matter. Do you want to know why?”

  Dupree is quiet.

  “Because you didn’t ask if I’d seen Vince Camden. You asked if I’d seen Marty Hagen. Well, there is no Marty Hagen anymore. You guys took care of that. So either way…I told you the truth. I haven’t seen Martin Hagen since his trial. Have I seen Vince Camden? You didn’t ask me that. Now get out of my office and don’t come back without a warrant, you piece of shit!”

  “I don’t think you understand what I’m telling you—”

  “Oh, I understand someone trying to put the screws to me!” Benny is worked up, red-faced, and doesn’t quite want this to end yet. “How long you been a cop?”

  Dupree looks down at him. “Five years.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “How long have you been a detective?”

  Dupree considers lying, but doesn’t want to give the guy the satisfaction. “Three weeks. I’m temporarily assigned.”

  “You’re a rookie.” Benny leans forward on his desk and smiles. “How do you like my city so far, rook?”

  Dupree smiles. “It was a long weekend.”

  Benny laughs, and leans back in his chair. “You want some advice, you stupid simple bastard?”

  “I don’t think I can afford you.”

  “Pro bono.”

  Dupree waits.

  “My advice is this: Go home. This place isn’t like where you’re from. There’s more corruption and backstabbing and bribery in the opening of a restaurant in New York City than in every crime ever committed in your little town.”

  Dupree considers him. “We got sleazy lawyers with bad haircuts in Spokane, too.”

  Dupree pulls on his coat, then reaches in his satchel and pulls out a single sheet of paper from Martin Hagen’s file. “Let me give you some advice. Next time you decide the only way to keep some guy from marrying your sister is to get him into the witness protection program, I wouldn’t doctor up an FBI report.”

  He slides the page down in front of Benny, who doesn’t look at it.

  “So is that perjury? Or obstruction?”

  Finally, Benny looks down at the page.

  “The FBI agent who got the warrant for this tap said it came from another case, some guy named Breen.” Dupree points to the page. “Somebody went through it and substituted Hagen’s name for Breen’s. I happened to tell this FBI agent how you went to school with the prosecutor in the case, and it turned out to be the same guy who prosecuted Jerry Breen. You believe that coincidence?”

  Benny’s hand goes to his temple. On the street outside a driver lays on the horn.

  “So where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Benny whispers. “I saw him two days ago.”

  “You’ll call me if you hear from him?”

  Benny nods.

  Dupree straightens up to leave, then, at the last moment, bends at the waist across the lawyer’s desk. “So how was that, Benny? Bad enough for you?”

  TIC WALKS INTO the kitchen and breaks into a huge grin. “Mr. Vince! You came back!” Tic is wearing the baker’s apron, dusted with flour and sugar. “How was the funeral, man? All sad and shit?”

  “It hasn’t happened yet,” Vince says.

  “People been coming in here nonstop asking about you. Cops. And a couple of other guys. The old man is freaked out. Oh!” Tic jumps with a realization. “Here, man. This is yours.” He unties the apron and holds it out for Vince.

  “No.” Vince shakes his head. “It’s yours now.”

  “I’m not the baker,” Tic says. “You’re the baker.”

  “No, I’m not staying, Tic. I just came back to do a few things. This is yours. You’re the baker now.”

  Tic stares at the apron. “It’s like you’re Obi-Wan and I’m Luke. This gives me chills, no lie.” He takes the apron and bows.

  Vince pats him on the shoulder. He steps past Tic to the closet, goes in, and turns over the bucket. Climbs on it, feels around in the ceiling tiles for his key. He takes the key to the trapdoor and descends down to the basement with his backpack. Yanks on the chain to turn on the light, glances up the stairs, then moves the empty bags, pulls out his lockbox, and opens it. It’s all there: twenty thousand and change.

  Vince looks around before picking up an empty flour bag from the floor and stuffing the money into it. Then he shoves the bag in his backpack.
Back up the stairs, Tic is wearing the apron, holding out a folded sheet of notebook paper. “Oh, you know that hot girl who always gets a dozen on Wednesdays? Farrah? She came in first thing this morning and left this for you.”

  Vince holds the note in front of his eyes:

  Vince: Please call me. I need to talk to you about something important. Kelly.

  Vince uses the kitchen telephone. Kelly is relieved to hear from him and wants to know if he has time to talk. She agrees to pick him up two blocks from the donut shop, in the alley. When he hangs up, Vince goes to the doorway of the kitchen and looks back over his shoulder into the donut shop. Tic is standing in Vince’s usual spot behind the display cases, his foot on a milk crate, talking to one of the old guys about Sunday’s NFL games, whether or not the Steelers’ win over the Packers means they’re finally on track. Nancy is walking around filling up coffee cups. Wisps of cigarette smoke are strung above the Formica tables like smoke from campfires.

  What if you could you take mental snapshots—fix the world in time and place? Then you could go through your memories like an album: the last time you saw your parents together, the sky from the driver’s seat of the first convertible you ever stole, the morning you left Tina in bed and turned yourself over to the FBI. It strikes him that this place was as close as he ever came.

  Vince takes one last draw of the rich smells—donuts and coffee and cigarettes. He backs out of the doorway, hoists his backpack on his shoulder, and walks through the kitchen and out the back door.

  DUPREE SLUMPS ON the bed in his hotel room. “He’s there?”

  “Yep,” Phelps says on the other end of the phone. “I called the deputy marshal on his case last night and told him what you’d found out about Camden. He said he’d cooperate. Then this morning he called and said Camden came by his office.”

  “When did he fly back?”

  “Apparently while you were sightseeing at the Statue of Liberty.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He told the guy he didn’t kill Doug and that he had something to do but that he’d turn himself in tomorrow. And then he ran off. We got surveillance on his house, but so far…nothing.”

  “What about the girl?” Dupree asks. “His alibi. You got someone over there?”

  “We’re a little shorthanded right now,” Phelps says. “County found a guy shot in the head and stuffed in his own car trunk last night. I’m tellin’ you, rook: it feels like one of those days. We’ll talk when you get back.”

  After he hangs up Dupree goes to the bathroom, retrieves his shaving kit, and stuffs it in his suitcase. He was going to see Dominic Coletti today, and check back in with Benny, but now there’s no need. He calls a travel agent, who puts him on hold, comes back, and says there is a United Airlines flight from Kennedy to Denver in ninety minutes. If he makes a short connection he can be back in Spokane by ten P.M.

  He calls Debbie to tell her, but there’s no answer. He unloads his gun, puts the shells in his shaving kit and packs the gun next to the shoulder holster in his suitcase, grabs his jacket, and races out the door into the hotel hallway. He runs to the elevator bay, turns the corner, and finds himself staring at the broad back of Donnie Charles, who is looking down the hall to see which way the room numbers run. His big head swivels back and he faces Dupree head-on.

  About Donnie Charles: the right side of his jaw is crimson and yellow, swollen as if he were chewing a plug of tobacco. His mouth is wired shut, inside and out; the wires are strapped around the back of his thick, terraced neck, run beneath his jaw, and disappear finally between lips the color and shape of night-crawlers. The welt above his eye is flat and oxblood red. His right eye socket is a slit, deep purple.

  They face each other for a moment and Dupree can’t help himself; he edges a step backward. “I don’t suppose you’re here to take me to the airport?”

  Charles reaches in his pocket and comes up with a small spiral notebook and a pen. He scrawls on the notebook and turns it to face Dupree.

  what time

  flight

  “Hour and a half.”

  Charles nods. Then he moves forward so quickly that Dupree barely has time to react to the knee that lifts him off the ground, and deposits him on the patterned carpet with a thud. He sits up and Charles kicks him in the face, sending him rolling across the floor. When he can focus again, Dupree sees Charles towering over him, curled around the pen and notebook. Finally, he bends down and turns the notebook to face Dupree, who has to block out his own rasping breath to concentrate on the words:

  not going to

  make flight

  KELLY DOWNSHIFTS AND parks her Mustang II across from Aaron Grebbe’s house. “Vince. Can I ask you? Did something happen the night you went out with Aaron?” Her blond hair is pulled back into a ponytail and Vince wonders how she gets her hair so tight on the sides of her head; it’s a flat, grooved surface, shiny and perfect—a hundred different colors of gold. She shifts in the open palm of a blue bucket seat; it’s all he can do not to trace the long line of her blue-jeaned leg.

  “No. Nothing unusual,” Vince lies.

  “It’s just…” She nods at Grebbe’s split level house. “He didn’t come to work this morning. He hasn’t campaigned. He missed a candidates’ forum last night. He won’t even take my calls. I just…I don’t know what to do, Vince.”

  Vince looks around. “Where’s his truck?”

  “His wife must’ve taken it. He’s alone in there.” She glances over to Vince, as if he might be wondering how she knows. “I sat here this morning and watched the house. He just walks from room to room. I think he’s drinking.” She covers her mouth—those long, elegant fingers—and Vince is aware that he looks at her the way he looks at architecture, admiringly, even longingly—but always from a distance.

  “I didn’t know who else to call. I thought you might know what to do.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll talk to him.” Vince pats her shoulder. He grabs his backpack and opens the car door.

  “Vince?”

  Looks back.

  “Will you tell him…that I’m sorry? That I didn’t—” She doesn’t finish.

  Vince nods, climbs out of the car and into the street. Across the street he climbs the steps, rings the doorbell, and hears shuffling inside. The peephole goes dark. A second later the door opens.

  Aaron Grebbe is unshaven, wearing sweatpants and no shirt. He is broad-shouldered and solid. He is also drunk. “Hey. It’s my one supporter.”

  Grebbe turns and goes into his house. “Come in. Pour yourself a drink. I was just watching Match Game. You like Match Game? I like Match Game.”

  He follows Grebbe into a sunken, carpeted living room, where a stand of bottles is spread across the blond-wood hi-fi. Grebbe plops down on the couch with a tall glass of brown liquor and a couple of melting cubes. Vince goes to the forest of bottles and finds most of them empty. There is a bottle of dark rum half full, however, and he pours himself a small glass and plops down on a brown leather recliner. Grebbe reaches into an overflowing ashtray, fingering the butts until he finds a cigarette worth smoking.

  The sound is turned all the way down on the big console TV. Gene Rayburn is grinning wildly; he says something to one of the contestants.

  “So, are you okay?” Vince finally asks.

  Grebbe looks from the TV to Vince. “Excellent.”

  “Kelly called me. She’s worried.”

  Grebbe takes a swig of the drink in his hand. “I can’t talk to Kelly right now.”

  “Your wife found out?”

  Grebbe looks as if he might cry. “I love Paula. I really do. If I had thought for one second…”

  “What happened?”

  “The night of the…thing…after I dropped you off I came home and she was up. And you know the funny thing? I haven’t told that woman the truth in two years. Except that night. ‘I met this guy,’ I tell her, ‘this gambler. And we went to an after-hours poker club and I talked to some voters and
then some guys tried to strong-arm this guy and I saved his life. I actually saved someone’s life.’

  “She just stared at me. And then she said, ‘You’re having an affair.’” He laughs. “I could’ve lied. I could’ve told her anything, that I was making campaign signs, that Reagan’s son took me out for breakfast. But no. I had to tell the one thing she’d never believe: the truth.”

  “I’m sorry,” Vince says.

  He shrugs Vince’s apology off. “I still could’ve passed it off, or at least not told her about Kelly. I’m good at lying, you know? I’m excellent, really. But I started thinking about what I’d seen. The people at that poker game. The guy in the car…I could’ve shot that guy, Vince. I mean—I wanted to! What does that say about me? I mean, what separates me from someone like him? There must be something…there must be something that separates someone like me from someone like—” He looks down at the glass in his hands. “I want to be a better man.”

  He shrugs. “So I told Paula that I was sorry. That I didn’t mean for it to happen. It just did. She asked who it was. I said it didn’t matter. She said, ‘Of course it does.’

  “So I told her.” He’s quiet, and after a moment Vince leans forward.

  Grebbe looks up, and seems surprised that Vince is still here. His head dips from side to side. “She took it pretty well. She nodded, like she knew that’s who it was. And then she went to her room, packed a bag, got the kids, and…just left.”

  “Do you know where she is?”