Yesterday's News

by Jeremiah Healy

  Three teenagers in matching varsity jackets were playing “keep-away” from a derelict. They tossed a booze bottle one to the other, the victim stumbling from boy to boy, always a toss slow.

  I walked down the alley toward them. The kid nearest me, who seemed about my size, stuck his foot out as the bum went blindly by him. Tripping, the derelict sprawled into a pile of loose trash. He slipped a couple of times as he tried to get back up. The laughing got louder.

  “What’s the joke?” I said.

  The nearest kid, the tripper, gave me a quick glance, probably seeing the brown bag in my hand. He said, “Fuck off, hairball. Unless you want to be next.”

  “Harsh words. But challenging.” I came even with Tripper, who squared around to face me. I set my bag on the ground. “There’s my bottle, boyo. Who’s gonna get the game started?”

  Tripper took a step backward, shaking his neck out and using the motion to check the position of his mates. The guy with the original bottle was turning it in his hands, a little shakily I thought. The other kid was looking back up the alley behind him, confirming his line of retreat. I guessed that Tripper was the only initiator in the trio.

  “Come on, fellas,” I said. “You guys are lettermen, right? I’m just the next level of competition. Who’s first?”

  Bottle said, “Cliff, maybe we oughta—”

  Cliff the tripper said, “Shut up.”

  Edging backward, Retreat looked behind him again.

  “Seems to me the team’s a little shy, Cliffie. Maybe you’ve got to lead by example here.”

  Cliff said, “Why don’t you fuck off before we hurt you, man?”

  “Hurt me?” I inclined my head toward the derelict in the trash, who was barely moving. “I thought this was just a little game you guys were playing. Just for laughs, you know? I didn’t realize you wanted to hurt anybody.”

  “I’m warning you, man.”

  “You’re gonna have to do better than that, Cliffie.”

  He tried to. He made like he was turning to review the troops again, but instead brought his right in an uppercut from behind his back. Sucker punch.

  I parried it inward with my right palm, shunting my body left and following with a half-force side kick to his stomach. He doubled over and dropped to his knees. I grabbed him by the back of his collar and crab-walked him over to the nearest pile of trash, pitching him forward into it. As he raised back up on all fours, I said, “You get the urge, Cliffie, better to throw up into the garbage.”

  He obliged me.

  I turned to the other two. “Cliffie here got a little too much into the game. Laughed himself sick. You guys feeling queasy, too?”

  They shook their heads.

  I pointed to Bottle. “Set that down. Gently.”

  He complied.

  “Now, when Cliffie here composes himself, you take him somewhere and clean him up.”

  Cliff managed to say, “Jesus, guys … get me home … please.”

  I moved sideways and gestured toward him. His friends haltingly came forward, each taking an arm and lifting Cliff to his feet. They swung back toward me.

  I said, “No. Take him the long way out.”

  Retreat said, “But our car’s—”

  “The long way. Or the hard way. Take your pick.”

  They looked at each other, hefted Cliff a little higher, and took the long way.

  I went to the man they’d been razzing. I got him up and over to the comparatively cleaner side of the alley, sitting him against the wall of the adjacent building. “You alright?”

  “Why’d she have to go and do that?”

  “Who?”

  “And with my own son. Hell, I knew she was a slut, they’re all sluts. But my own son. Why? Why?”

  I retrieved his bottle and mine, resting his lengthways between his knees.

  Near the rear door of Bun’s, a heap of clothing wearing shoes twitched as I passed. I stopped.

  “Hey,” I said, shaking the man at the shoulder.

  “Go ’way.”

  I said, quietly, “Hey, pal, I got a pint here for the guy who saw the stabbing the other night.”

  “Go ’way.”

  I moved on to the next heap and repeated the offer.

  “Seen it. Yeah, yeah. I seen it. Let’s have the pint.”

  I pulled it halfway from the bag, so he could see the label. “Describe the guy with the knife.”

  “Nigger. Always niggers with the knives. Gimme the pint.”

  “Describe him.”

  “Aw, you know the niggers, man. All look alike. Gimme the pint.”

  “Sorry. No sale.”

  “Fuck you. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”

  Ten feet farther down, a third body said, “Yeah, I the one seen it.”

  “Describe the guy.”

  “Describe him. Charlie be dead.”

  “I mean the guy with the knife.”

  “Where’s that pint at?”

  I showed him.

  His face came forward, deep black complexion, lesions on the cheeks, puffy eyes examining the product from a distance of four inches. “Cheap bastard. Couldn’t gets no good stuff?”

  “I haven’t heard much reason to try.”

  “And you won’t, neither. Not for that shit.”

  “How do I know you’re the one I want?”

  “Guy you want talked to the cops. You seen anybody else around here makes sense enough, cops talk to him?”

  “You still haven’t told me anything.”

  “You wants me to talk, huh? For that cheap shit?”

  “Guess we can’t do business.” I straightened up and turned to move on.

  “Wait a minute. Wait!”

  I looked down at him.

  “Well, come back here. I ain’t gone go shouting it all over the alley.”

  I squatted next to him.

  He said, “First thing, what your name be?”

  “John Cuddy.”

  “You ain’t no cop.”

  “No, the cops want information, they just bring you in, dry you out till you feel helpful.”

  “You gots that right.” He put on a cagey grin. “How’s about me and you do a little deal here?”

  “I told you my name. How about yours?”

  “VIP”

  “Vip?”

  “Vee-Eye-Pee. Very important person. Leastways to you, you showing even that cheap shit there.”

  “What’s the deal?”

  “You gives me a little taste, I gives you a little taste.”

  “I’m guessing your little taste is this pint here.”

  “Man speaks my language.”

  “What’s my little taste?”

  “Something only the man talk to the cops know.”

  I handed him the pint. He used a corner of his coat to muffle the sound of the top being unscrewed.

  “Fuckin bums in this alley, they hears a tax tag getting tore off, they all over you for some.” He glugged half the pint before I stayed his arm.

  “You said a little taste for me, too, Vip. Remember?”

  “Man done Charlie gots up with Charlie’s knife still in his leg. That taste enough for you?”

  Bingo. “What’s the rest of the deal?”

  “This here pint be enough for me tonight. I ain’t no fuckin drunk like some peoples I could mention.”

  “And?”

  “And I calls you tomorrow.”

  “You’re gonna call me tomorrow.”

  “Yeah. You know, like on the telephone?”

  “Why can’t you just tell me now?”

  “’Cause I tells you now, you pays me now. Then I ain’t gots nothing by tomorrow ’cause the scum I gots to live with here rip me off.”

  “What makes you think I’ll pay you tomorrow?”

  “Watched you with them fuckin white boys up the alley. You the kind comes through. You learns that on the bum, you know?”

  I took out the Crestview card I had and wrote my name
on it. I put it in Vip’s shirt pocket.

  “Tomorrow’s a long day. When are you going to call me?”

  “Don’t gots no watch, man. Wanna leave me yours?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then be sometime after sun-up. I don’t lays around all day like some peoples I could mention.”

  I rose.

  Vip said, “And bring cash money when you comes. You overpaying for this cheap shit I gots to drink.”

  Eleven

  THURSDAY MORNING broke bright and clear. I opened the window, drawing in deep breaths of ocean air, the seagulls shrieking. I hit the bathroom, then pulled on running shorts, shoes, and a tee shirt Nancy had given me with the legend PUSHING FORTY IS EXERCISE ENOUGH.

  Walking by the motel office, I spotted Jones bustling behind the desk. I opened the door and said, “Emil. You’re up pretty early.”

  He looked annoyed. “Goddam receipts.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t find them. I’m the only goddam employee of this chickenshit outfit, and I can’t find the goddam receipts book that I musta laid some goddam place.” He leaned over the counter. “The hell is that getup?”

  “I’m going running. Any jogging trails you can recommend?”

  “Jogging trails? You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

  “How about just a nice road, reasonably flat, that I can go out about two miles and then come back.”

  Jones pointed. “You drive west of here yet?”

  “No.”

  “Well, head west along Crestview. The road’ll drop toward sea level pretty quick, then she’s flat and steady along the water for a while. Take her acrost the river bridge. Other side of the bridge oughta be about two miles.”

  “Thanks, Emil.”

  I told him a guy who sounded down and out might telephone for me. Jones groused about it, but finally agreed to take any message.

  As I left the office, I heard him mutter, “Jogging trails.”

  Crestview descended fifty feet, my hamstrings bunching as I thumped downhill. The harbor smell was pungent, probably from the natural human pollution of too many shacks, with too little plumbing, lying in an uneven string along the water to my left. The houses on the other side of the street were bigger though apparently no younger, with the mismatched proportions of the homemade. I counted a trailer about every fourth lot.

  There wasn’t much vehicular traffic. A cadaverous guy in a baseball cap driving an old yellow pickup waved to me as he headed east. A newsboy with no front teeth on a heavy-frame Schwinn almost collided with me at a hedged driveway. An asthmatic Buick with two primer-painted fenders and a mud-splattered rear end chugged up behind me, passed, and continued around the bend, spewing a noxious combination of oil and smoke out its rope-rigged tail pipe.

  You can learn more about an area walking or jogging than driving. I think it’s because you have the freedom to appreciate something three or four times from slightly different aspects. A wooden lobster boat, sloughed in a side yard, being cannibalized fore and aft to supply its successor. A dozen lobster pots, the old kind with slat-and-wire construction, rising in alternating tiers on a sagging front porch. Engine parts, heaped in uneven piles outside a double garage with only one door still hinged. A cardboard FOR SALE BY OWNER sign tacked optimistically to a stake in the seared lawn of a plywood cottage with a tin roof.

  Halfway through the bend in the road I could see the bridge looming a mile away. A refugee from an erector set, its head and shoulders were covered by a mist the low-angle sun hadn’t yet burned off. Picking up the pace a mite, I heard a car with a powerful engine start somewhere behind me. The driver throttled down and seemed to approach, the sound diminishing again. I looked back over my shoulder and saw the front of a Camaro, its amber parking lights watching me from the mouth of the bend. After a minute, I looked again. The car hadn’t moved.

  I tried to think of what the driver could be doing other than following me. I couldn’t come up with anything. On the other hand, he was keeping his distance. Only a quarter mile now from the bridge, I told myself I was imagining things.

  I went by a few more houses and a shanty “Open for Breakfast” but hosting only two cars outside it. One was the beat-up Buick that had lapped me earlier. Facing out, its lavish grille gave me a sharklike smile as I went by. The imagination is a bad creature to unleash.

  The bridge itself was two lanes, all I-beams and bolts, rusted here and reinforced there. It looked about a hundred yards long, spanning the shallow river maybe a hundred feet below. There was a steel vertical barrier on the outside walkway of each lane to keep vehicles from sliding off into space. No traffic in sight front or back. I decided to lope along the pedestrian curb anyway.

  I was maybe twenty strides onto the bridge when I heard the Buick’s engine cough and catch, the driver gunning it to life. I didn’t remember hearing the car door open or close, though the morning air was still enough that I should have.

  I broke into a sprint for the other side of the river.

  The Buick roared up behind me, spitting and choking. I risked a glance. The sun was behind the car, silhouetting the driver as he or she wrenched the wheel to the right, climbing the curb. I was like a bug in a rifle barrel, with the Buick as bullet coming up after me.

  Looking forward again, I had at least another fifty yards to the land on the other side of the bridge. Six to seven seconds minimum at the maximum spurt I could manage.

  I heard the Buick sand some paint off the side of the bridge. Real close.

  Using the barrier part of the bridge as a gymnast’s horse, I vaulted up and over. There was six inches of I-beam extruding from the outboard side. My right foot landed and held. The Buick struck the barrier just as my left foot hit, causing me to slide off. The beam barked the skin off my left shin and knee.

  Falling, I grabbed for a cross-rung abutment of some kind with my right hand. I couldn’t hold on, but it slowed me enough to let me grab and hold the next. Some rarely used muscles popped in my upper arm, but I was able to swing, chimplike, onto another crosspiece with my left hand, getting a purchase with both feet a second later.

  The Buick sounded as though it kept going, the wheezing of its engine replaced by the gutty rasp of the other car I’d seen, charging hard, horn blaring. The Camaro came to a screeching halt something short of where I was.

  After a car door opened, I heard running steps. Leaning out, I saw a familiar face peering moonlike over the top edge of the barrier.

  Duckie Teevens said, “Shit, Cuddy, you look just like Spiderman there.”

  “You make the driver?”

  Duckie shook his head. “I saw the car start up just after you left the motel, but I didn’t pay him any attention till I saw him jump the fuckin curb on the bridge.” Duckie swiveled toward me and smiled. “I figured he had you sure.”

  “It was a man, then?”

  “Huh?”

  “You keep saying ‘him’ and ‘he.’ Could you tell it was a man behind the wheel?”

  “No way. I think whoever it was had one of those commando hats on, you know?”

  “Commando hat. You mean a watch cap?”

  “Yeah, those little black things like the kids wear in the snow. Probably was a guy, though.”

  “Why?”

  “Can’t see no broad cold-blooded enough to go after you with a car like that.”

  “Why didn’t you chase after him, then?”

  Teevens laughed. “I thought you were feeding the minnows. The boss told me, keep an eye on you. Can’t keep no eye on you if you’re in the water and I’m going after some hit-and-runner, making some kind of citizen’s arrest for crissake.”

  “You peg the Buick as a hit-and-run?”

  Duckie slowed for a car turning left, then went around it slowly, using his signal both swerving right and coming back left. He waved to a police car parked in the shadow of a variety store just past the intersection.

  “I knew the fucker was t
here! Thursday morning, he’s always there by now. Thinks he was gonna get me, hot car like this. I tell you, I drive them nuts, I do. I got this jet engine under me, I drive like a fuckin grandma. Never got a ticket for nothing, moving violation, equipment, nothing. Fuckers.”

  “Duckie, you peg the Buick as a hit-and-run?”

  He looked over at me. “No. I don’t see it that way.”

  “How do you see it?”

  “Seems kinda strange, him lying for you like that, then setting himself up so he could get you on the bridge. Takes a lot of thought, seems to me. Cold mother.”

  “Also seems kind of strange that Coyne gets himself stabbed, Jane Rust takes an overdose, and the Buick sets up to nail me like that, and they’re not connected.”

  “You’re the detective, pal.”

  “So you still buy your boss’s view of somebody acing Coyne as an informant?”

  “I can see it.”

  “If it was your brother Coyne had dropped?”

  Teevens got exasperated. “Look, Cuddy, you watch much TV when you were a kid?”

  “Some.”

  “You shoulda paid more attention. That kinda thing happens all the time. Sometimes, a guy turns another guy for money, the first guy don’t get to count the money, let alone spend any of it.”

  “And somebody who killed Coyne that way gets Rust to take mashed-up sleeping pills and then tries to spread me over that barrier back there? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Like I said, you’re the detective.” He glanced down at my leg. “Looks pretty bad there. You want a doctor?”

  “No, thanks. Drugstore’ll do it.”

  Duckie stopped outside a CVS. I went in and bought some antiseptic, bandages, and adhesive tape. Back in the Camaro, there was no talking until we pulled into the motel parking lot.

  As I was getting out of the car, he twisted his torso to face me. “Cuddy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Something like this happens again, don’t bet the mortgage on me being around, okay?”

  I looked at him. He said, “I tell the boss about this here, and he’s probably gonna tell me to give up tailing you.”

  I hopped on my right foot and swung the bad leg out of the car. Closing the door, I said, “Thanks for everything so far.”