The Adjustment League

by Mike Barnes

  On his lap, behind his crossed arms, the little blob in white. Eyes in a flesh slit, mouth hole. Feet in sockettes. But the rest white. Bandages. Windings of them around the face, over the head in a skull cap. And plaster casts—two arms, one leg. Little white mummy. Stiff white arms and legs sticking straight out above and below the man’s arms.

  Who took this?

  Strange squiggles behind them, between them and above their heads. Bright drizzling gray. Smidges of molten silver, melting, twisting down black velvet. Siver nakes.

  Tinsel. Tree.

  Murmurings, tense shiftings, in the space beyond this.

  The stairs go on beyond. This is just an alcove, though the deepest yet. Beyond leads further down.

  Stone waiting, close. Impatient for his start. Eaten into, delayed.

  Close up, close up! My turn now.

  You’ll get yours, Stone. You always do.

  Just now, for a few seconds more, I have to stare at what I’ve found. Stare and stare, not knowing how long it may last.

  A charmed circle. No one here gets in or out.

  I don’t know these people, I’ve never seen them before.

  Yet who else can they possibly be?

  21

  Nothing.

  Nothing I trust from the hospital. Confetti glimpses, dreamless sleeps.

  Just—there. Then—back, somehow.

  Seeing a world in bits. Thing-bits. Body-bits.

  Voice-over by Stone.

  Clanks, running water. Someone washing the dishes.

  Bundling sounds, foul smells. Seeing to the garbage.

  Chair by window.

  Bringing a coffee. Blur of face, fall of hair as she bends. Hands—warm, rough—steadying mine around the mug. Smooth and warmer still.

  Hands, hands, coffee. Russian doll.

  “Sandor?” says a voice. Dead leaf swirl in my throat.

  “No, no Sandor. Is…” But speech too fast.

  Down here they blur. Rustle and dissolve. Move too fast to see. Freeze in statue shapes. Only the dead move credibly. Speak words that reach the ears.

  Been here before. And returned from it. And will again. Eventually. No clock time here. Where you rest. And learn. And pay. Where adjustments come from—and go to.

  §

  Memory scraps, scissored from—this morning? A day ago? A week? Water running, steam. Bathroom. Hands holding me to strip off stinking clothes. Step out of the rank pile. Four hands—two holding up, two popping buttons, tugging down pants. Strong hands. Women’s.

  Slivers in mirror mist: puffy, blue-black, scabbed. Hello Dead Eyes.

  I can’t see her well. Them? After a time I can look up, find a woman-shape across the room. Fuzzy oblong at the stove, the sink. I can’t see more than that. When she comes close, to give me food or drink, take my cup and plate and wipe my face and hands, she disappears. Just bits of her. Tendril of gray-black hair. Chapped red finger. Cracked nail. Corner of an eye, like a clamshell closing. It helps me start to talk. This blur, nearby.

  “Devils.” It fills my mouth and then I hear it.

  “Devils, sure.” Close, above. “Always lots of devils in the world. One for every angel. And I think you have an angel with you when you need. They find you here, upstairs… with what you have inside you? But no, they wait in the basement. Somewhere someone going to find. Devils? I say you have an angel. Very good angel by your side.”

  “Money.” Another time. A question, though it flatlines.

  She laughs. “Why? You want to give me some? Mebbe fire me? Well, you know what? You’re not my boss. You no hire, you can’t fire. You want to, talk to the boss.” She laughs, a deep sound. “So eat your soup.”

  Later. Window dimming to dark. Nighttime? Same chair. Somehow a day has passed without anything happening. Without my seeing, feeling—without my being in it.

  No matter.

  Beside me again. Her coat on. Putting paper, warm in my hands.

  Cookie on a napkin. A star, five-pointed. White icing, pink.

  “…come to you… ready for bed.” Sounds start, then I understand, catching the last.

  People climbing down to me on ladders. Warn them what is here.

  Warnings are useless.

  You see—so can’t be warned. Don’t see—can’t be harmed.

  Hand brings star to mouth. Sweet glaze, soft warm crumbling. Good, says Judas mouth. Bits fall on my lap. Drool drops, black between brown stars.

  For a moment I see her face. Her mouth at least. Smiling. Teeth, not too white. Real.

  Strong hand on my shoulder. Leave it there forever.

  “Is Christmas coming,” says the voice above. “Isn’t it?”

  §

  Two visitors, a long way in. Christmas closer from her stars and bells. Santa Claus with red and white icing. Green tree with sparkles. I hate Christmas, like cookies—nothing’s right to say.

  Knocking, firm. Low words at the door, and she goes. Her footsteps clicking away.

  Tall shapes, they bring over the chairs she keeps by the stove. Sits on one, puts her feet on the other. Set them by this chair by the window.

  Keeping a little space between us, not crowding too much.

  Cops all the same.

  Close, I see them a little better. The gray fog eats at them, but in between, I catch bits of not-old faces, a suit, a skirt and blouse.

  “I’m Detective-Sergeant Beverly… is Detective-Constable Frank.” Coming in with lots of static, but I get the main bits. The names would slide on out again, except the man’s is Beverly and the woman’s Frank. The oddity a signal boost. “We’re from the Integrated Crimes Unit. Have you heard of that?”

  Heavy feeling when I shake my head. Delicate, too. Broken parts, sloshing.

  “It pretty much explains itself. Most bad actors keep it simple. One bad thing, one department to deal with them. But some bad actors do so many bad things they cross borders. Departments crawl over each other to get at them. Homicide, sex crimes, fraud, drugs, cybercrime, immigration…” He runs out of fingers and just holds them up, ten fat wrinkled worms—sliding in and out of fog—while he muses at the uncountable kinds of bad acting. And expects me to, I guess.

  I go back to looking at the low gray through the glass. Half-forget they’re there.

  “You don’t remember us, do you?” The woman. Frank.

  Don’t shake again. That sloshing’s bad.

  “We visited you three times. Twice at the hospital, once right after your admission and once a couple of weeks later. The first time you weren’t conscious. The second time you were, off and on, but couldn’t speak.” Her voice not unkind, for a cop’s. Taking it slow, but not so slow it’s mean. It takes out some of the static, brings her through clearer. “The third time was a week ago. Your injuries are healing, and the doctors don’t feel there’ll be permanent brain damage—otherwise they wouldn’t have discharged you. But you couldn’t give us any answers. Didn’t seem to quite see or hear us, was my impression.”

  The guy shifting, beside her. Wants to take this harder and faster. No need to look at him to feel it.

  “But that wasn’t—this isn’t—just your injuries. The beating you took. The, uh, pills you’d taken. This is… your condition. Am I right?”

  That’s a go, says Stone. Give ’em something so they don’t amp up.

  I nod, heavily.

  “Listen, sir”—if Beverly heard what Frank just said, he didn’t understand it—“we’re not asking for much. Just a few simple questions and answers, details we’re trying to clear up. We ask, you answer. You don’t even need to get out of your chair. You wouldn’t be back home if you couldn’t do that much. And I think we’ve been very—”

  “How about this?” An edge in her voice as she cuts over him. She may be junior, but Beverly out of
his depth here. “I don’t know how much you remember, or how much anyone might be telling you. I assume you’re not reading the newspapers or listening to the radio. So why don’t we do it this way? I’ll tell you some things we know, or think we know. Show you some pictures. If I’ve got it right, you don’t need to say or do anything. If I’m out on something, you can shake your head. Correct me if you can. I won’t ask a question unless I need to. And then you can answer… or not. All right?”

  It is, so I do nothing. She maybe smiles. Seam of white anyway.

  “We know you know Ms. Villanueva.”

  Slides a photo, a newspaper blow-up, into my hands. A Vivian I’ve never seen before. Grainy news grays, but more than that. Hair back under a hairband, no make-up. Wide, earnest eyes. Blazer over high-collar blouse—what it shows of her clothes. A microphone in front of her. If you could shower the vamp and cunning from a fox. A de-sex spa…

  “It’s hard for her, really hard. But she’s been making some public appearances. Radio a couple of times. TV, once. Trying to get other victims to come forward. We know who some of them are, but unless they’re willing to make a statement… Cross-examiner in a courtroom—well, that’s a whole other thing. But by working with us, she’s also trying to work with them. Leading by example.”

  Hello, Ms. Villanueva.

  “We know you saw her quite a lot in a short time. Met her several times, those two weeks in October. At Dr. Wyvern’s dental office where she worked. At the restaurant up the street”—she flips a pad—“Ukiyo-e, where she was having dinner with Dr. Wyvern. You visited her at her home, too. Her condo at Bayview and Sheppard. Again with Dr. Wyvern. All that’s established. Sign-in books, security cams, witnesses if we needed them. You’re not denying any of that, I take it.”

  I’m not.

  “The fuzzy area—the gap between versions—is why. According to Dr. Wyvern, the visits were escalating harassments in aid of extortion. He named the sums discussed. There’s no disagreement there. But according to Ms. Villanueva, you were attempting to obtain the money for Judy Wyvern, now in custody, charged with her father’s murder. I’m sorry if I’m telling you things you already know, that you may have trouble following, I’m not sure. But we need to get this clear.” Grit in her voice when she needs it. “In Dr. Wyvern’s version, your concern for his sister was just a front, a scam, to get the money for yourself. To keep on getting it, probably, as long as you held on to evidence that incriminated him. What else would you expect—Ms. Villanueva’s view—from a serial sex predator? Someone who, like his father, drugged and sexually violated women in his medical practice? What other kind of motive would such a man understand? Her words, more or less. And a view I’m strongly tempted to accept, absent other evidence. As I suspect most women—most people—would be.”

  Making Max eat the whole thing. Not that he doesn’t deserve to choke on it.

  “Your car. Your Honda.” Beverly, snappish. It’s not just his junior taking all the play. It’s interviewing someone with my file, my Face—the Face done double, super-Face—and having to mince along like this. No talkee, no speakee. Kid gloves all the way. “It was impounded after being towed for a parking infraction two blocks from a murder scene. The morning of the murder. Or the morning just after. Several hours later, say.”

  I have to talk to make him disappear. Performing way out somewhere beyond myself. Subway busker in Carnegie Hall. “My ex-in-laws. They live nearby. I go back sometimes.”

  “Nostalgia?”

  “The car died.”

  Worth it, despite the effort. The words hauled up like rocks. He sinks back in his chair, fog closes over him. Like a gray blanket. Like a head slipping under the waves.

  Frank leans forward. I don’t mind that. Her. “We’re not interested in you for the murder. Not really. We’ve got Judy’s confession, freely given. Which for all her… challenges… hasn’t changed since the first time she gave it. For motive, there’s all we need in the victim’s photograph collection. Which should go a long way towards reducing her sentence. Some sort of special custody, obviously, given the nature of the crime. But… Even that will seem too harsh to the people who’d like to see her walk. You wouldn’t know, I guess, but there’s a groundswell for that already. Blogs, editorials, Facebook groups. Ms. Villanueva gets asked about it in her interviews. She doesn’t tip her hand, but it’s pretty obvious she’d lean to leniency, too. I can’t say I disagree.”

  Shiftings in the fog shroud beside her. Beverly unhappy in his bag.

  I’m taking in too much. Static mostly gone, radio almost clear. It’s dangerous—wrong in post-window time, Stone’s time—and it scares me. I’ve climbed up way beyond myself, up into regions I’ve no business being in. Like a fish taking a stroll on deck, gazing at stars. Gopher lounging beside the burrow—sky full of hawks.

  Stone not saying a goddamn word. Which scares me too. He should be howling foul.

  “Just a couple more things today. Then we’ll let you rest. We’ve made a good start. You know these men.”

  Glossy colour photo. Peach and Lemon in a doorway, pastel shirts and crotch-kissing pants, heads leaned together grinning. Heading out for a night at the club, it looks like.

  “This is a more recent shot.”

  Ms. Villanueva doesn’t issue pink slips. The slips are pulps of red, white and gray where the heads were. Strangely little of it on the shirts, just flecks on the pressed collars. Someone strong and swift. And, too, they’re hanging off a couch, most of them still up on it. A natural drainage position, the pool going out of the frame.

  Bye bye, bros.

  “A lot of blood on the bats, as you can imagine,” Frank says. Something soothing in the way she talks. Not hard, not gentle—just quiet and direct. “Most of it theirs, of course. But a little of it yours. Traces, down in the cracks. You were in our system… and the match came up.”

  “Which means the guys who did you got done too. Exact same way,” Beverly growls from inside his bag. Pointing out the obvious for any morons in the room. It’s torture for most men to sit silent while a woman does the talking. It eats like acid, all over.

  A little more gets said. Not much, but most of it I miss as I descend back into the element where I’m supposed to be. Feel Stone waiting below, fuming.

  Just a few more things I catch.

  I hear them go to the door, call the woman back in. Hear her chuckle at something said as she returns to the kitchen. A strange sound to hear, that chuckle. I can’t place it up there where I was for a few moments, can’t place it down here where I’m heading.

  Detective-Constable Frank comes back for a moment. A gray skirt flecked with black, a fine plaid, in front of me, the start of legs below.

  “Something you may be wondering. It just occurred to me,” says her voice, clear but thinning as I drop. “Something you may be in the dark about. It was Ms. Villanueva who hired your caregivers. Round the clock at first. Then just for daytime. She said she wanted to come and thank you personally, and plans to. But for now this was the least she could do. For helping her get out of a trap she couldn’t get out of herself.”

  A pause. I nod in it. Something, someone, tells me to.

  “I think Sandor Wyvern might have chipped in too. Maybe even some strangers. Like I say, there’s something of a groundswell. It’s touched off something, this case. And you… you’ve got some fans out there.”

  Hand comes out, stops in time. Smart lady.

  Out there.

  She comes back one more time. You could like her… if you were here.

  “Something I forgot to ask. Everyone in ICU’s been scratching their heads on it. A couple of office bets, even. Where’d you find the Christmas Music shots? How’d you get your hands on them initially? From Judy?”

  I need a voice again and find one, finally.

  “Old… Maude’s keepsake…,” it says. Rust-th
ick, fading.

  “Maude… Wyvern?”

  A nod towards a nod. A single wing in flight.

  §

  Bombed backward after they go. Like the time after TAL, like every time since. Ruins, blacker than before. Rubble chunks, dangling wires. Not even a sign of smoke. Dresden ’45.

  Stone needs his time. He takes it. If he grants a window, he exacts its full equivalent in stir. Any unsanctioned movement back to operations, any unwarranted life in the world—he yanks the chain back, hard.

  Like this episode with the officers. I didn’t ask for it, they came to me. Still, it’s a premature flit upward. A flap into adjustment territory—into life. Which isn’t due to happen for weeks. Months maybe. An exchange with anyone, however passive and piecemeal, is reaching over my head. Living off the ranch. It’s got to be countermanded by a spell in the depths.

  Super-subtle in some ways, Stone’s a brutalist in others. He keeps strict books.

  Shut-down is shut-down. Closed means closed.

  §

  Vivian out there. Vivian and—who? Doing things. Making plays.

  The thoughts come singly, far apart. Long sticky spaces between them. Reaching one feels like breaking free from tough elastic webbing—some determined insect, all mandibles. And a shiver of wanna act, itching of wing muscles slime-coated and pinned, meeting clean air.

  Followed immediately by a Stone advisory.

  Not your beat, son. That’s window talk. We’re post-window now. This is mine.

  Work to be done.

  Course there is. Always. But not till we’re done.

  Not till I say.

  Stone’s voice lazy, apt to drawl, when he knows he’s got the floor.

  And then almost gently at times, crooning as to a restless child. You know how it works. Window’s open, then it’s boarded up. Settle into dark. Shh. We’ll get there soon enough.

  And webbing, soft sticky gauze, comes back in. Heavy and thick, like the first days. Soft, dark, impenetrable cocoon. Woman—women?—there again. There longer, there all the time it seems. Sometimes, opening my eyes in the dark, I see her reading in a chair pushed up against the kitchen counter, little lamp over her shoulder. She? They? I can’t see to tell them apart. Just fuzzy blobs.