A Man's Game

by Newton Thornburg

  Under the seat he found a pint of rum, not quite empty. He drained the bottle, then drove the few blocks to Volunteer Park and the water fountain there. He drank deeply, doused his head in the fountain’s stream, and filled the empty rum bottle in case he needed more water on the way home. Still unsteady on his feet, he took a piss right there at the fountain, in fact on the fountain. In front of him the fenced-in reservoir glowed in the moonlight, as did the Sound far in the distance, beyond the Space Needle, near which the college girl had laughed at him—just as he had been laughed at earlier this night.

  It was a thought he carried with him back to the car. And as he drove, he began to feel it again, the anger he thought he had all but drowned in the night’s booze. It was an anger with a face: the smug mug of his new “buddy,” Jacko Baird. Christ, but it galled him that the man thought him so stupid he wouldn’t catch on to what was really going down, what the whole long fucking night together was really about—nothing more or less than the same old shit Jacko had dished out at Harold’s the week before: his smug conviction that Slade simply wasn’t good enough for his precious fucking daughter. And all the bullshit talk about the two of them getting to know each other and Jacko secretly wanting to watch while some poor cunt was getting hers—it was just a lot of noise to cover up what he was really saying: “You ain’t good enough, Jimbo. And you’re stupid enough to con. So let’s be ‘pals.’”

  Yeah, in your fucking dreams, Slade thought now. Somehow, somewhere, sometime, he was going to look down at that smug mug, its skin going purple and eyes bulging, begging for just one more breath, and he was going to say, “What’s the matter, Pops, you don’t want me to be your pal no more?”

  That would be so goddamn sweet, so totally satisfying, Slade could almost feel it, a high better than coke or coming. And then the smug bastard would be out of the way and the two of them, Slade and Kathy, would finally be able to get together without any interference. For now, though, all he had was his anger, the old feeling of sickness and rage at being so grossly underestimated, at being judged not good enough, not smart enough or straight enough for the Bairds of this world. He was so lost in the feeling—and still sufficiently drunk—that he almost ran down two old farts in the crosswalk on Fifteenth, in front of the hospital. In the rearview mirror he saw them yelling and gesturing at him, and that only deepened his anger and resentment.

  He wasn’t sure why he didn’t drive down the hill to the freeway and head for West Seattle. It seemed almost as though there was something else he had to do, one last duty to perform before he could go home and sleep. Maybe it was just to keep on driving, he thought, keep himself busy so he wouldn’t have to think about Baird and what the smug bastard thought of him. He considered stopping off at an after-hours joint and getting another pint of rum, but settled for half a meth, figuring it would at least ease his headache. But as his heart rate jumped, so did the pain.

  Though it was still dark out, he could see a faint smudge of light in the sky, the first rays of the morning sun striking Mount Rainier far to the south, otherwise invisible in the haze. The smudge looked like a rip in the sky.

  Working his way south, he came upon a young couple fighting next to a car parked in the street. The man, a skinny spade with dreadlocks, was indifferently slapping the girl, who was Asian—a hooker, Slade figured, since it was his experience that only a fallen chink would be found dead with a nigger. Slowing down as he passed them, he saw that the girl was small and pretty, so he circled the block. And when he came to the same spot again, he was surprised to find the car and the spade already gone. The girl, though, was walking along the sidewalk, and Slade saw in the light of the streetlamps that she was crying.

  Pulling over, he threw open the car door and called to her. “Hey, purty girl, can I give you a lift somewhere?”

  Baird woke briefly at first light. Feeling dizzy and nauseated, he made his way to the downstairs bathroom, where he urinated and washed down a couple of aspirins with two glasses of water. Then he went back to the family room and again dropped off. It seemed only seconds later that it was bright daylight outside and Ellen was standing over him, dressed in jeans and a shirt.

  “God, you stink,” she said. “Why don’t you go up to bed?”

  “Yes, why not?”

  Looking bored, she watched him get to his feet and head upstairs. After visiting the bathroom again, he went to his bedroom, his and Ellen’s. Just as he was closing the door he saw Kathy watching him from across the hall. She looked frightened and concerned, but he didn’t want to talk to her; he didn’t want her seeing him in the shape he was in. So he closed the door and crawled gratefully into the unmade bed. But as he began to fall asleep again, her face stayed with him, the lovely eyes looking grave and troubled.

  In time, though, it was not Kathy he saw but the dancer Satin as she undulated nude an arm’s length away, her skin crawling with what appeared to be incandescent worms. And soon she was straddling him and moving her hips, easing herself onto him while his hands reached hungrily for her breasts. Then there were other hands pulling at the girl, trying to take her from him. Baird grew desperate, moving faster and faster, hoping for release. But the hands pulled harder, and suddenly she was gone. Baird felt a crushing sense of loss and disappointment. He wanted to kill someone.

  He slept till one in the afternoon. After showering and getting dressed, in jeans and a pullover, he went downstairs and had coffee in the kitchen. Kathy came in and asked if he wanted something to eat and he told her that he would get it himself. She asked if scrambled eggs and bacon would be all right, and he said yes, that would be fine. She said nothing more then, not until she served him, generously adding toast and orange juice to his order.

  “You must be hungry,” she said.

  He reached over and pushed out a chair for her, inviting her to sit with him, but she shook her head.

  “No, I don’t want to sit,” she said, giving him a look of reproval.

  “You’re mad at me.”

  “No. We were just worried, that’s all. Mom said you always call when you’re going to be real late. And we didn’t know if you were all right.”

  “I’m sorry you were worried, baby. But everything was all right. I was with Leo and his wife and some friends of theirs. And I guess I had a bit too much to drink, and didn’t realize how late it was.”

  Kathy was standing at the sink, her arms folded, still trying to show her disapproval of him. It was not an easy role for her.

  “Would you do me a favor?” he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Come over here.”

  She came grudgingly. He put an arm around her waist and gave her a hug. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “I didn’t mean to worry you. But everything’s all right. Honest. So take it easy, okay?”

  Her smile lit the room. “Why not?” she said.

  Later, he heard her upstairs, talking to her mother, assuring her that everything was all right. But Ellen wasn’t interested.

  “If your father wants to carry on like some college fraternity lout, let him. I could care less.”

  Later still, Baird had stretched out on a chaise on the deck, taking the afternoon sun. After a while Kathy came out and took the chair next to him, without lying back. When he squinted at her, trying to see her in the sun’s glare, he could see that she was still troubled. She spoke hesitantly, almost guiltily.

  “Daddy, I know you said everything was all right, but I’ve been thinking.”

  “And—?”

  “And I’ve been wondering if you weren’t just trying to protect me—keep me from worrying—by saying that. I’ve been wondering if maybe you weren’t out with him instead.”

  “Slade?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why, honey? What would I be doing with him?”

  “I don’t know. The same things, I guess. Following him. Threatening him.”

  “But I already tried that. And we both know how well it worked. Poor old Fre
ddy Bear.”

  “I guess that’s my problem, Daddy. Two days after that, you leave Mom and me alone at night. That isn’t like you.”

  “The police have Slade under surveillance,” he said. “So I wasn’t worried about him. I’m sorry if I upset you, though. It makes me feel like shit.”

  “Oh, Daddy.”

  He reached up and touched her face, and her hand covered his, holding it there.

  “Maybe Mom’s right,” she said. “Maybe you should take me to Uncle Ralph’s.”

  “No, I feel better with you here. We can protect you here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Baird looked at her, still somewhat unsettled by her eerie resemblance to the stripper, Satin. It was curious, he thought, how the one could stir him only with lust, while the other, virtually her double, could fill his heart with a look. At the moment, though, it was his eyes that filled.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” he said.

  Seeing his tears, she got down on her knees and hugged him. “I love you so much, Daddy,” she said.

  Baird kissed the top of her head. He lifted her face and kissed her on the cheek. Then they both realized that Ellen was standing in the doorway, watching. Kathy got to her feet and smiled at her mother.

  “Everything’s okay now,” she said. “He’s not the bad boy we thought.”

  After she went back into the house, Ellen took her place in the chaise next to Baird, lying back and closing her eyes against the sun.

  “Well, it’s nice to see there’s at least some love in this house,” she said.

  Baird looked over at her. “I love you too,” he said.

  “Do you, Jack?”

  “I wasn’t with a woman last night.”

  “Did I ask?”

  “I’ve been depressed lately, that’s all. And I drank too much.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Mid-life crisis, I guess.”

  “Yes, that must be it.” Her voice was cool, emotionless.

  Unlike the uniformed police and the regular detective units, the Metro Squad did not work in force on Sundays, since their cases were already on the books—were not hot in other words—and therefore could be investigated more easily at the discretion of the detectives. On this Sunday, though, both Sergeant Lucca and Lee Jeffers were on duty when Detective Bob Harrelson, in Homicide, called about a body found in a dumpster off South Rainier. He had been the principal on the Discovery Park rape-murder and had been downright accommodating when Lee horned in on the case, thinking it might tie in with the Evans’ rape.

  Lee had wanted to roll on this call alone, since it was her case, or at least might turn out to be part of it, and because she had developed a comfortable rapport with Harrelson, who was about fifty, a beefy, hard-drinking extrovert who liked to kid her about her partner.

  “Old Bleeding Hart,” he had told her. “Worked five years with the bastard, and I don’t think I ever saw him laugh.”

  So Lee wasn’t enthusiastic about showing up with Lucca. But there wasn’t much she could do about it. The sergeant, listening to her take the call, got up from his desk and announced that he would drive.

  On the way there, he criticized her work again, saying that she was trying too hard to link the three cases, and now possibly four.

  “They really ain’t got nothin in common,” he told her. “Least of all, Jimbo Slade.”

  “So what are you doing here then? Why tag along?”

  “Someone’s got to keep you in line.”

  She gave him her killer smile. “I’m so fortunate to have you.”

  “And don’t ever forget it,” he said.

  As they pulled into the alley off Rainier, he reached out the window and put the yellow flasher on the LTD’s roof and turned it on, siren and all. The crowd, mostly young blacks in a festive mood, parted reluctantly, some play-kicking the car with their inflatable Nikes, while others mugged for the new arrivals, throttling themselves bug-eyed and drawing fingers across their throats, preparing the detectives for what was awaiting them up ahead.

  In addition to police cars and an ambulance, two TV trucks were already on the scene, their reporters and cameramen ignoring the yellow tape, penetrating even closer to the dumpster than the paramedics, who stood waiting patiently with their gurney while the detectives, Bob Harrelson among them, went about doing their work: measuring, photographing, taking notes. After Lucca parked, Lee led the way under the tape. Harrelson, seeing Lucca, made a big show of greeting him, even throwing up his hands.

  “Well, as I live and breathe, if it ain’t the Conscience of the Department, me old buddy Bleeding Hart Lucca.”

  Lucca barely glanced at him. “Fuck you, Harrelson,” he said.

  Lee tried to pretend everything was sweetness and light. “What’s up?” she asked.

  Harrelson shrugged. “Problems. The ambulance jockeys are sayin its our job to get the victim out of there, and we’re sayin it’s their job. As you’ll see, it’s not your average dumpster—all chicken bones, ribs, fat, spoiled greens—you name it.”

  Lee smiled. “I’d argue too.”

  But Lucca wasn’t amused. “What bullshit,” he grumbled, and went over to the paramedics. He showed them his shield and said, “Sergeant Lucca, Metro Squad,” then unloaded on them, explaining that they had their goddamn jobs only because their goddamn ambulance was licensed by the goddamn city and state, and that those licenses could be revoked at any time for malfeasance or nonfeasance of duty.

  “In other words,” he bawled, “I’d advise you to get on the fucking stick! Now!”

  As if he had to show them the way, he went straight over to the dumpster, where Lee already had reluctantly joined Harrelson. The container alone would have been bad enough, with its flies and stench, its colorful mosaic of maggoty offal. But there in the midst of all that lay the victim, a small, very pretty-Asian girl, nude except for a pair of black-felt boots. And the contrast, the revolting horror of it, made Lee glad she had skipped breakfast.

  “We’re not sure what she died of yet,” Harrelson said.

  “Where’s the M.E.?” Lee asked.

  “On his way.”

  “Well, he’s sure not gonna want to get in there with her,” Lucca said, gesturing to the paramedics. “So get her out.”

  During the next hour, the detectives learned a good deal more about the victim, an eighteen-year-old Vietnamese named May Tan. The medical examiner estimated that she had been dead no more than six hours and that the likely cause of death was a stab wound in the back, puncturing her heart. She had been beaten severely about the face and had been sodomized both orally and anally, with visible signs of dried semen on her—evidence that would have elated the detectives even a week earlier, before a state appellate judge ruled that DNA-type testing was not sufficiently well established scientifically to be admitted as evidence against a defendant. Of course that still left blood-typing, and though it sometimes contributed to the case against a defendant, it was rarely sufficient to make for a conviction in and of itself.

  May Tan had worked for a small escort service run by one Tommy Dice, twenty-eight, an ex-con with a considerable rap sheet, including convictions for robbery, assault, drug dealing, and pimping. The uniforms, after locating Dice, had brought him to the scene, Harrelson having hoped that someone in the crowd might have seen him with the victim, perhaps even dumping her in the alley. But no one came forward.

  The detectives, with Dice, then moved from the alley into the chicken-and-ribs restaurant responsible for the revolting dumpster. It was a dark, dismal joint with uncomfortable old wooden booths and steel-tube tables and chairs. Though the place was still closed at this early hour, the owners—an elderly black couple—had come down from their upstairs apartment to let the detectives in. Heavy and glum, the pair shuffled around in slippers, shaking their heads. No, they hadn’t seen anything or heard anything, and no, they didn’t know the girl or Tommy Dice.

  Finally, with Lee and Lucca looking on, Harrel
son sat Dice down in one of the booths and slid in across from him, his burly torso barely making it between the table and bench. He offered Dice a stick of Doublemint gum, which was refused, then took one for himself and sat there grinding away and looking over at Dice as if they were great good friends instead of polar opposites: Harrelson middle-aged, white, overweight, wearing a rumpled tan suit, seemingly as jolly as Old St. Nick, while Dice was probably still in his twenties, slim, blue-black, hair fried into dreadlocks, his clothes gaudy and expensive, shirt a dazzling blue satin, pants billowy white linen. And there was gold too, yards of it draped around his muscular neck.

  Like most big-city cops, Lee knew Dice’s type only too well: the supercool professional black criminal. This one in fact looked so cool, so bored, he appeared to be in danger of dropping off. Except for the blue-black color, he reminded Lee of Marty, her second husband. On the force, in Narcotics, Marty had been a wild man—angry, hyper, sleepless—waging his own personal war against the Great American Plague. But once he went over to the enemy, it was as if he had found Jesus, something that totally transformed him. And it wasn’t just the coke he was using, for he had begun doing that while he was still a cop. Rather, Lee believed it was simply that he had found his calling, that of the outlaw. Further, she believed it was almost endemic in black men, an alienation from the American establishment so severe that many could not live with themselves except outside its cool embrace. And Dice at the moment was doing little to change her opinion, giving Harrelson nothing, making the detective pull his story out of him bit by bit, as if he were extracting the man’s teeth.