Box Nine

by Jack O'Connell

  “Do you disagree with me?”

  “I guess there’s a lot of hostility,” he says.

  “You have a way with understatement.”

  “If you’re looking for a reason why …”

  She cuts him off. “I’m the supervisor. They’d hate any supervisor they got over here. On top of that, I’m a woman and that doesn’t go down very well with Jacobi or Rourke. So I know why they hate me and I don’t lose any sleep over it, believe me. But I don’t understand what it is about you …”

  “That makes two of us,” he says quickly.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “I’ve never been this popular guy, okay? I’ve never been Mr. Popularity.”

  “This isn’t about being popular, Ike.”

  “I don’t know.” He pauses, looks up at the clock. “It’s getting to be that time.”

  She ignores his comment. “What I think we should do,” she says, “is have dinner together sometime and discuss it. What do you think about that?”

  Ike looks down at his knees. “You want to have dinner with me?”

  “That’s right,” Eva says, not backing down at all.

  “You think that’s a good idea, us working together and all?”

  Eva smiles. “It’s just dinner, Ike. Sometimes you don’t know if something’s a good idea until you give it a try.”

  Ike concedes this point. “I guess.”

  “Besides,” Eva adds, standing, “we outcasts have to stay together. It’s a lonely world out there, Ike.”

  They both laugh at her last comment and it takes away some of the edge Ike’s feeling. “I guess we could have some dinner,” he says.

  She nods to him and leaves the break room without another word, holding her black mug cradled at her chest.

  Ike gets up and pushes the chairs back against the wall in a row. He puts his mug in the cardboard box and makes a mental note to wash it out in the men’s room sink later on. He walks back to his cage feeling a little light-headed and hyper.

  He sinks back into the perfect position on the edge of his stool reflexively and takes a minute to ball up his hands into fists and rub at his eyes. A chill moves up his back and he shudders slightly and takes a deep breath. It’s going to be that kind of a week, he thinks to himself.

  He looks down at the small metal lip that juts out from the wall of slots in front of him. The pile of mail he left off with is still sitting there. But next to it is a small brown cardboard box, the type of box the bank mails new checks in. It measures about five by three inches and is maybe an inch tall. It should have been put with the parcels. Ike doesn’t remember seeing it when he left the cage.

  The package is taped closed at both ends with several pieces of that thick, wide brown mailing tape. Ike leans over it and reads the simple, hand-printed address:

  Box 9

  Sapir Street Station

  Quinsigamond

  He reaches down and picks it up and immediately puts it back on the lip. His fingers are wet with something thick and oily, something seeping from the bottom of the package. He sees now a small puddle forming under the carton. And then he notices the smell—an awful, rotting-type smell. His coffee rises up halfway toward his throat.

  Ike pulls a handkerchief from his back pocket and holds it up to his mouth and nose. Then without thinking, he picks up the package, dabs away at it, then mops up the puddle on the cage lip.

  He throws the soiled handkerchief into a nearby wastebasket. Then he does something he has never done in his career. In his whole life. He uses his fingers to tear open the package. He breaks open the tape at each end and runs his finger along the inside edge of the package, touching something moist inside. His heart starts into a rapid and painful pump, like rubber bullets being fired at the inside of his chest.

  He rips the entire top of the package open and tosses it on the floor. He looks inside. And he looks away for a second, unsure, then brings his eyes back again.

  It looks like the chopped-up remains of a small fish. There’s a tiny section of the face left, one eyeball still visible. The smell is horrible. And then he sees the parasites—tiny mites and worms crawling through the terrible remains.

  A sweat breaks instantly over most of Ike’s body. He makes himself move slowly, to create the illusion of control. He makes himself walk, not run, to the men’s room. He steps inside and bolts the door and turns on both faucets in the sink. He takes a breath to keep himself from vomiting.

  Then he cups his hands, lets a pool of water fill up, and begins to splash his face, repeating the procedure over and over, trying to steady himself, wash away the sweat, clear away the smell, obliterate the image of decay and cruelty that’s just smacked him like a hit-and-run car on a familiar street.

  He knows already that he can use all the water in the city’s reservoir, but he’ll never be successful. It’s too late. The image is there to stay.

  Peirce is in the parking lot, unlocking her Honda, when Lenore moves up next to her.

  “Never a dull moment, huh, Charlotte?” Lenore says.

  Peirce balks and drops her keys to the ground and Lenore says, “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “It’s not you,” Charlotte says, stooping. “I hate these briefings.”

  “Yeah, well, we can’t let things get boring.”

  Peirce smiles, but it’s clear she wants to get going. Lenore leans her behind against the Honda to show she’s not finished talking.

  “They teamed you with the professor,” Peirce says. “Zarelli will go nuts.”

  “Screw Zarelli,” Lenore says, pauses, and adds, “What’d Welby want?”

  All Charlotte can say is, “Huh?”

  “At the end there. When he asked to speak with you.”

  Peirce straightens up, tries to square her shoulders. They stare at each other for a few seconds.

  Finally, Charlotte says, “Look, Lenore—”

  But Lenore cuts her off and in a low but still-friendly voice, says, “Look, Charlotte, I couldn’t care less who you sleep with, okay? I think you know that. If Welby was telling you where to meet him or what to wear tonight, great, have a goddamn ball. Doesn’t concern me.”

  Charlotte nods.

  “But if he was asking you about any of us … about me or Richmond or Zarelli or even the lieutenant, that’s a different story. And I won’t put up with an inside mouth. You know I won’t.”

  “Put up with?” Peirce repeats.

  “You know what I’m saying, Charlotte. We stay out of Welby’s way and he stays out of our way. That’s how it’s always been. If he’s saying he wants to suck on your neck, great. Get what you can. But if he’s asking you to talk about fellow officers, if he wants to know about narcotics …”

  She trails off shaking her head and Peirce says, “Yeah, what?”

  Lenore says, “Then you and I have a problem, Charlotte.”

  There’s another round of staring, then Charlotte steps forward and sticks her key into the door lock. Without looking at Lenore, she says, “He asked me to wear this black chemise tonight. He bought it for me.”

  Lenore holds back a laugh, raises up off the Honda, and says, “That’s what I thought.”

  She touches Charlotte on the shoulder and takes a step away, then turns back and says, “Remember who broke you in, kid.”

  Charlotte gives her own smile and says, “How could I forget, Lenore?”

  She climbs in behind the wheel, kicks over the engine, and watches Lenore walk to her Barracuda, then she pulls out of the lot and takes a left toward Main Street. When she’s a couple of blocks from headquarters, she pulls the Panasonic microrecorder from her bag and thumbs the On switch.

  Victor, Victor, Victor. Master of persuasion. How’d I let you talk me into this? Okay. Professional voice. It is Monday. November twentieth. Ten A.M. I’m sitting in my Honda at a red light on LeClair Ave. That digital sign on the front of the Quinsigamond National Building says it’s thirty degrees outside and
there are thirty-three shopping days left till Christmas. Which reminds me, I’ve got to make a withdrawal today. It’s that time of year, Victor. So what are you getting me? [Giggle] Your favorite narc, Charlotte Peirce, and I’ve been such a good cop all year. Have you made your list, Victor, checked it twice? Okay, I’ve got the green. I’m not exactly sure what you want from me here, Victor, Mr. Mayor. Should I call you Mr. Mayor on this? How official is this, boss? That’s the bitch about this thing. Not like talking on the phone. Or pay phone in your case. No one ever answers you back. It’s just talking to yourself. The guy in the red Camaro in the next lane is staring at me, Victor. Thinks I’m nuts. Nowadays you see people talking to themselves in their cars all the time. Take a picture, schmuck. He just blew past us. It’s an ’81 Camaro. Vanity plate. Mass reg L-I-N-K. Link. Like that black guy on Mod Squad, remember? No, you wouldn’t remember. That’s the big thing about couples like us. The difference in ages. We refer to different TV shows and the other guy never gets it. I’m turning left onto Main. I’m heading for the highway. [Pause] Back again, dearest. Just rolled off the expressway and onto Kimble. I’ve decided to start with the Institute. You never said whether you wanted me to tape interviews. Should I try to hide this thing in my bra or something? You know, it’s small but not that small. Are any of these things made by American companies? Jesus. It just hit me. This isn’t it, Victor? This better not be it, Victor. It’s nice. Great. Panasonic. Voice-activated and all. But it’s not going to cut it for a Christmas gift. Not from you. Not after the past six months. That would be just like you, you know? And you probably took the money out of office expenses. Probably had that secretary buy the damned thing. I don’t know what to make of you lately. After the briefing, you say “my personal input” and—what was it?—“the investigation within the investigation.” You use these words. You’re always using words. That should be the big requirement for mayor. Forget voting. Get the guy who’s best with words and make him the boss. I don’t know why I’m going along with all this. I figure I’ve got two choices here. Either you’re, like, paranoid over the edge, or you just want to hear my voice all day. Which would be sweet. Number two would be nice. But I’ve got this feeling that you’re just one more guy with a little more power than he’s comfortable with. Okay, so back to the briefing. Obviously, there are people you don’t trust. You want a cop’s perspective, right? But it’s got to be someone you can trust. Why are you so scared, Victor? [Pause] I’ll tell you one thing right off the bat. I looked around that conference table this morning and I listened to that weird-as-they-come Oriental guy, Woo, the language guy there, and you know what hits me most of all? I’m bored. I’m bored to tears, Victor. Sorry, but that’s from the heart. Anyone with the brain of a five-year-old can see that this Lingo stuff is just one more log on the fire, you know? To me, it’s just not that interesting or different. Maybe the way it hits the brain and all makes Doc Woo all hot. Great for him. To me it’s just one more product that no one’s supposed to have. A controlled substance. That’s the term. That’s supposedly my job. Stand between the public and the product. They’ve got no right to it. Protect them from themselves. I don’t want to get into a big discussion here ’cause that’s not what this tape is for and I know how you get and it would only annoy you. But you’re right to ask my opinion. ’Cause the fact is, you and I can’t help but look at this thing from two different places. So, from my point of view, where does that leave us? The same boring vicious circle. The same system, over and over again. I’m not the smartest cop in the world, Victor, but I can’t help but think every now and then about how both sides, the dealers and the cops, live off each other. And what would happen if it really ended? If you eliminated the product? What would they do and what would we do? Someone would have to think up something else. Forget it, I’m babbling. You know what’s scary? I’m realizing that this is how my brain always works when I’m driving. Listen. The most likely way to distribute a new product is to run it through already-opened channels. Give it to the marketers to market. They’re already set up for business. They know what they’re doing or they’d be shut down already. They’ve got liquid capital. They’ve got experienced personnel. They’ve got distribution centers. They’ve got a pipeline to the customer. The customer’s already trained, already running to them. Just bring in the spring line and hang it on the rack. They’ll buy. If they liked designer A, they’ll love designer B. So that gives us the Park, of course. There’s no question. Bangkok is where the stuff is going to end up. So, it seems to me, this should run just like a normal investigation. We get word on a new shipment, something larger than normal. And you know, like they say, we round up the usual suspects. The system takes over. There’s some fireworks, maybe. Some gunplay. The newspapers run a real sweaty story, a lot of front-page pictures, bodies facedown on the sidewalk, half covered up by blankets. And on Monday you come back to work again. But you seem to think there’s something more here. You want to say the difference is the capacity for violence that the drug triggers. But please, don’t insult me. I’ve seen almost ten years of people wired over the edge. It’s just a matter of degree after a while. You think we’ve got a problem here. You say everything’s still too vague, we don’t have enough information yet. But you know what I think, Victor? I think that you think that there must be someone, maybe someones, that you suspect aren’t exactly on the right team. And in this case, that bothers you a lot more than usual. [Pause] All right, Victor, I’m not saying yes or no. I’ve got some thoughts on the subject. Just opinions, you know. I’m pulling up to the visitors’ parking lot at the Institute. There’s a little white shack and a gate. I’m shutting off now. I’ve got to talk to the guard. Later, boss.

  Rollie’s Grill is a classic Quinsigamond Lunchcar Company diner circa 1925. It now rests on the original site where it was put down years ago. It was moved twice in the course of its life, but now it’s back where it belongs on the corner of Frenchman’s Boulevard and Fourier Avenue.

  The current owner, a Cambodian who calls himself Harry, has done pretty well since he hauled ass out of his homeland in ’75, just steps ahead of the bloody knives of the Khmer Rouge. Improbable as it might sound, he married a Puerto Rican girl named Isabelle and they’ve got quite the family now—four little girls who are always playing in the last booth next to the exit. Harry has trained them to scream when someone tries to bolt on a check.

  Harry and Isabelle own an ark of a house, a sprawling three-decker crammed with people spanning almost a hundred years in age. It sits like a mirage behind the diner in a state of perpetual renovation. Harry’s rounded up a few cousins who managed to escape genocide and he’s trained them, made them into solid short-order cooks, though he thinks Lon is a little inconsistent on the omelettes. Isabelle, for her part, has a huge extended family, all of whom seem to work at irregular intervals, in one capacity or another, at the diner. The air during the dinner rush is a wild mixture of Spanish, Cambodian, and a fractured but street-hip English. The menu, scrawled at the start of each day on an enormous chalkboard that hangs by a chain from the barreled ceiling, often features an unlikely combination of paella, Kompong Som soufflé, and franks and beans.

  Isabelle has done wonders with the diner. She’s got a real knack, a genuine instinct for design and color. The Grill had become tired and shabby when Harry picked it up from its previous owner. In the past year the place has come back to life. While Harry secured iffy bank loans and scrounged for secondhand kitchen equipment, his wife retooled the whole of the diner. Isabelle swears she had no plan in mind besides restoring cleanliness and order, but one look inside Rollie’s and you’re forced to doubt her. She went back to the basics, scrubbed and rescrubbed the tilework and taught herself how to regrout. She stripped an awful yellow paint job from the booths, brought them down to the original wood, and then stained them into a subtle sheen. She recovered the torn stools, sanded down windowsills, spent hours scraping grease from the grill’s backing wall.

 
And when everything passed her severe standards, she took the diner a step further. She branded it with the stamp of Harry and Isabelle, personalized it, made it unquestionably theirs. She went about this last step with the devotion and scrupulousness of a borderline fanatic. She mined their native cultures and combined the results for a weird but pleasing style. Two framed and matted maps of Cambodia and Puerto Rico now hang over each doorway. Shelves are crammed with carvings, curios, talismans from each homeland. The cash register is watched over by statues of both the Buddha and St. Anthony. It’s as if Isabelle has formed a tiny new nation composed of artifacts from two very different worlds. And it’s as if this minute, barrel-roofed nation immediately transcended its origins and wound up stronger and more peaceful than its forebears.

  Dr. Woo has been waiting ten minutes, studying the decor, when Lenore comes through the door. She’d given him directions that were a little more vague than was necessary and she’d wondered more than once about whether he’d make it. She says, “How goes the war?” to Harry’s cousin Lon as she walks past the counter and slides into Woo’s booth. Lon closes his eyes, grows a huge smile, and nods rapidly. Lenore thinks he’s got a monster crush on her.

  “Any trouble finding the place?” Lenore asks, sliding out of her jacket. The diner is always a little bit overheated.

  “Not at all,” Woo says too fast. “You give excellent directions. One of the benefits of police experience, I suppose.”

  Lenore grimaces and makes a fast, reflexive shushing sound. She realizes she’ll have to explain this, though she doesn’t want to.

  Woo looks around and asks, “Have I said something wrong?”

  Lenore raises her eyebrows. “It’s just that nobody here knows I’m a cop and, I don’t know, I’d rather keep it that way.”

  Woo looks interested. He lowers his voice conspiratorially. “You think that their attitude toward you would change if they knew you were a police officer?”

  Lenore shrugs. “No idea. Probably not. I don’t know. I just like this place. I kind of stumbled upon it and so far it isn’t real popular. It hasn’t been profiled in the newspaper yet. It’s still mine right now. I just don’t want to endanger—what is this?”