Lush Life

by Richard Price

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did he tell you that if you didn’t do that, your brother would lose his tin, maybe go to jail?”

  “He would.”

  “And that since you’re only fifteen, your slate gets wiped clean in December no matter?”

  “It does, so why not?”

  “Did he also happen to mention that you’ll most likely draw three years’ probation, mess up once, in you go?”

  “So?” A little wavering. “I won’t mess up then.”

  “Meaning what, you won’t sell weed or you won’t get caught?”

  Another heartbeat of hesitation, then, “Won’t sell weed. Jesus, what do you think?”

  “Eddie, I know what you’re doing, and it’s sort of noble of you, but I hate the idea of him just walking on this and leaving you with a three-year sword over your head.”

  “So? So what?” the kid’s voice going high-low on the oscilloscope again. “You don’t think I can make it?”

  “Honestly?” Matty suddenly so tired. “I have no idea if you can or can’t.”

  “Thanks a lot, Dad.”

  “It says more about me than you. But that’s not the point. It’s . . . you’re being used.”

  “No, I’m not! I’m keeping my brother out of jail. And by the way?” Eddie nearly shouting now. “Your birthday is May sixth.”

  It was four hours since they first kissed in the cellar, and even though the restaurant was packed all night long, they kept going back down every half hour, hour or so, for another bump followed by frantic tongues and groping, each time pushing it a little further than the time before. They never spent more than a minute per trip, but Eric always came back up to walk across the crowded room with a hard-on like an Indian club.

  On the second trip down she just flat-palmed the bulge in his pants.

  Next time it was his turn, taking her nipple in his mouth, one long, slow suck, the thing popping up rubbery and going back in her shirt twice as big as it was when pulled out; looked like a top hat.

  The time after that she got a hand down inside the front of his jeans, ice-white fingers stroking his balls.

  Time after that, his hand went down hers, down to the curls, her breath in the hollow of his throat.

  And each time they came back up the stairs, studiously ignoring each other, the room seemed a little more agitated than before; but he was on tonight, Eric; crisp, speed-reading people like a radar gun; you to the bar, you go home, you right this way, embracing the regulars, giving passing waiters and busboys two-second shoulder squeezes, back rubs, everybody happy? He sure was.

  The last time they had gone down there, maybe forty-five minutes ago, she unzipped him, pulled him out, bent over, and put it in her mouth.

  And now it was eleven o’clock, the next time down his turn to jack up the stakes, Eric drunk on the possibilities, on hope. He didn’t understand anymore why he was being so obstinate about cooperating with the cops. So fearful. Just go in tomorrow first thing and do the right thing. Do it and be done with it. Then write, act, take yoga, take five, whatever, live.

  The front door was momentarily clear to the street, Eric seeing the bouncer, Clarence, out there hitting on a tall, redheaded chain-smoker, and then that Post reporter Beck curved into the frame, Eric even having a half smile of recognition ready for this foot-dragging vulture.

  “Hey, bar or a table,” reaching for a Ten Commandment–sized menu.

  “Actually, can I talk to you for a minute?” Beck smiled apologetically.

  “About?” Eric already sinking.

  He heard the words: interview, father, cowardly, unconscionable, unspeakable.

  “And I think it would only be fair to give you a chance to tell your side of it before this goes to bed, you know what I mean?”

  Eric stood there.

  And when he could finally turn to the room, Bree was uncorking a bottle of red at the nearest deuce, looking at him alight with tension, mouthing over the heads of her customers, Shall we?

  On tiny, otherwise deserted Mangin Street, Lugo and Daley walked towards the BMW with South Carolina plates parked in the shadows directly beneath the Williamsburg Bridge, each overhead passing vehicle announcing itself with a rattling rumble.

  The driver, a black man in a button-down blue shirt, rolled down his window before they got there, regarded Lugo and his flashlight with a sober forbearance, a here-we-go-again tightness around the corners of his mouth. Slowly crossing her arms over her chest, the girl in the passenger seat leaned back and murmured to him, “Didn’t I tell you?”

  Lugo looked from one occupant to the other, then smiled. “Did I just help somebody win a bet?”

  Eric showed up for work an hour late the next morning, his eyes as cracked as fried marbles.

  Page three:

  Did Eric Cash have a rough day? Maybe, but you know who had a really rough day? My son. My son Ike had the day to end all days. You were wronged, Eric, no doubt. So you take a little time to smooth your feathers, then step up. Otherwise it’s cowardly, it’s unconscionable, it’s unspeakable.

  He would have gone in to them today. Fired the lawyer and stepped to the plate. Last night that girl, that Irish-eyed girl, the possibility of her, had got him past his own monumental NO, had got him past his terror of that windowless room, had got him past his own desperate and desolate resolve to flee, but it was as if they had been waiting for this, waiting for his heart to reopen, some cosmic cocksucker hiding in the bushes, whispering, Now.

  Smash me flat. Again. So, no. Raise me up to slam me down. So, no. No.

  People looking at him . . .

  Before this morning, the only one besides the cops and his lawyer who knew the full story was Harry Steele. And when he saw today’s paper, his boss was sympathetic, although Eric felt that there was something sinister in his commiseration; something on the layaway plan.

  He looked across the café to the newspaper dowels; his humilation hanging there like hanks of hair. Shaving the tip pool just wasn’t cutting it. He had nine thousand to his name, five thousand of which was the start money on that never-to-be-finished bullshit screenplay, and nothing else, no marketable talent, nothing in his kit but running a dining room and the notion of doing that in upstate New York, or anywhere else . . .

  He thought of his parents’ house: white chenille bedspreads and floral wallpaper; of Binghamton: fields of slush, gray highways to nowhere.

  There was a rumor that Steele was sniffing around Harlem for a new spot. But they had cops uptown too. They read papers uptown too.

  The thing to do was make as much money in as short a time as possible and go.

  People looking at him.

  Fuck you all.

  I am gone.

  Matty walked into the squad room at noon to see Berkowitz, the deputy inspector, sitting on the visitor’s side of his desk, his boiled youthful face staring calmly out the window.

  Well, even if Billy had followed the script perfectly yesterday, what the hell did he expect?

  “Boss.”

  “Hey.” Berkowitz rose, the John Jay ring on his offered hand catching the light. “Busy?”

  “Couple of break-ins around Henry, a shooting at Cahan, Scout troop short a child . . .”

  “Khrushchev’s due at Idlewild.”

  “There you go.” Matty took his seat behind the desk, waited for Hammertime.

  “May I?” Berkowitz gestured for Matty’s Post, then flipped it to the back sports page: Bosox 6, Yanks 5.

  “This new guy, Big Papi, guy has what, five walk-off home runs this year? Huge as he is, can you imagine what a monster he’d be if he played in New York? With the media machine we have?”

  And there it was: Matty telling himself to play it smart by playing dumb.

  Berkowitz first turned to the photos of the memorial pyre on page 2, then turned to that buck-wild, utterly out-of-control Billy Marcus interview on page 3, folded and flopped it on the blotter, the header facing Matty.

>   Fucking Mayer.

  “What did you not understand about the press gag?”

  “Do you see my name anywhere in that?” Matty started working it. “Or with the other, do you think the dead kid’s friends came to me for permission on that memorial service? And this fucking reporter Beck has weaseled his way into the father’s head since day one. What can I do? I say to the guy, please don’t talk to anybody, especially that snake, but you know what? He doesn’t work for me. He can do what the hell he wants. And frankly? I wish the poor bastard would stay home and deal with his family, because right now I have got my hands full on this one. I’m like a one-man band on this one. I can’t even get anyone on the horn, whoever I reach out to it’s ‘Oh, Jimmy? He’s out in the field right now.’ I call so many guys that’re all of a sudden out in the field, it’s like harvest time. Guys who named their children after me: ‘Oh yeah, he just stepped out.’ You don’t think I get the message?”

  “Look.” Berkowitz laid a hand on the blotter. “No one wants whoever did this to walk, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it here.”

  “There is?”

  Berkowitz gave him a look and Matty got off his horse.

  “The fact of the matter is, Mangold, Upshaw, they pick up the paper today, I get called in, ‘Is English not Clark’s native language?’ ”

  “Boss, I just explained—”

  Berkowitz held up a hand. “Perception, reality, whatever. They’re not happy, and shit rolls downhill. They’re at the peak, I’m like midmountain, and you’re in this, this arroyo at the bottom. If I can be any more picturesque than that, let me know.”

  “In my father’s house there are many bosses,” Matty said.

  “Whatever. Hey, nobody is telling you not to go all out, just do it quietly.”

  “How can I possibly go all out with what I just told you?”

  “Well,” sighing, “this too shall pass. Hopefully this week’ll bring another headline . . .”

  “Why is that a hopeful thing? He was a good kid from decent people, I’m not gonna lay low until some solved triple-header makes 1PP look better in the papers.”

  “There’s this mountain, see?”

  “We’ve been to the mountain.”

  “Right.” Berkowitz crossed his knee, picked a thread from the lapel of his jacket.

  The DI sat there fuming, rock and a hard place, Matty knowing enough to keep his mouth shut, at least for the moment.

  “You’re making your problem my problem, you know that, right?” Berkowitz finally said, Matty almost bowing in acknowledgment. “But, I have to say, you did the right thing at that meeting last week.”

  “Boss.” Matty nearly lunged across the blotter. “You want to help me on this? I need people to go the extra mile. I need people to pick up the phone when I call, I need more than—”

  “All right, stop, stop.” Berkowitz shifting, bucking, thinking it through. “OK. Here’s the deal,” lowering his voice. “In order for me to help you here, keep my own head off the block, it’s got to play out like this. Anything you need, anything you want, from now on you go through me, only and directly, and I will take care of it.”

  “Really.”

  “Really.”

  “Great.” Matty leaned back, then came forward, elbows on the desk again. “For starters? Give me my seventh-day recanvass. Better late than never. But that means I need to be able to get the manpower, I need to be able to reach out to Warrants, Narcotics, Borough Patrol, Anti-Crime . . .”

  The DI took out a datebook and a small gold pen from the inside pocket of his jacket, started writing.

  “I need targeted narco sweeps and vice sweeps in the Lemlichs and Cahan. I need targeted warrants. I need a Crimestoppers van cruising the Fifth, the Eighth, and the Ninth from the East River to the Bowery and from Fourteenth to Pike.” Matty trying to keep his wish list rolling while twisting his head nearly upside down to see if Berkowitz was actually writing any of this down. “I need detectives and patrol from an hour before to an hour after the time of the shooting, that’d be four a.m., passing out flyers on all the key corners down there, doing on-the-spot canvasses . . .”

  The more Berkowitz wrote without complaint or question, the queasier Matty became.

  “I want detectives on call to go to the Eighth to interview the collars as they come in, and I need all this to happen, when . . . When can I get this . . .”

  “Sunday night,” Berkowitz said, closing the book like a cigarette case and slipping it back into his jacket. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Sunday night going into Sunday morning?”

  “Going into Monday morning.”

  “Boss, we’re looking for habituals. Who’s going to be out there. Who goes barhopping on a Sunday night.”

  “You want this happening or not. Saturday’s too soon, Monday I can’t promise, Tuesday’s unpredictable to the point of science fiction.”

  “OK. All right, I’ll take . . .” His next worry not even letting him get through the sentence.

  “OK?” Berkowitz got to his feet.

  “Hang on, wait.” Matty putting a hand out. “Just, all due respect . . . Just, let me worry about this going the other way. We’re talking Sunday, today’s already Friday . . .”

  “Did I just not say I’ll take care of it?”

  “Just . . .” Matty put his hands flat on the desk, lightly closed his eyes. “Can you just indulge me here, let me just paint a worst-case scenario here. OK, tomorrow’s Saturday, right? Me being the way I am, I won’t be able to help myself but to call you on your day off to get a progress report. If I’m lucky, I’ll catch you maybe making breakfast for your kids or coming out of Home Depot with a new sander or whatever, but you’ll have your hands full, be distracted, say, ‘Yeah, yeah, everything’s good to go,’ and I won’t be in a position to press for details.

  “Now, if nonetheless I start calling the promised people Sunday morning and start getting a lot of ‘He’s out in the field’ again? If, and once again I’m talking worst-case scenario here, if it all goes south come D-day? Forget about it. It’s Sunday, you’re not going to be reachable. Even I wouldn’t take my call. Boss, make me believe.”

  “All I can say to you is, barring some massacre over the weekend, I will take care of it.”

  Berkowitz rose to his feet, draped his London Fog across his arm.

  “Boss . . .” But Matty was unable to press for further reassurances, just didn’t have the juice, and that was the problem.

  “Matty. You’re a good guy. I’m trying to keep you from getting hurt.”

  Alone in the elevator, Tristan whispered new beats to himself, jerking his shoulders and slicing the air with short chops of his downturned hands, then got into being onstage doing it with Irma Nieves in the audience, Crystal Santos maybe, but definitely Irma Nieves—the concert abruptly canceled when the door groaned open on seven and Big Dap got on.

  As was expected of him, Tristan backed into the opposite corner of the small car, this being the same elevator in which Big Dap had shot a police with the guy’s own gun a year ago.

  Dap wouldn’t even look his way, but beneath the royal icing, Tristan took the opportunity to give him a good once-over; Big Dap not so big in private, a little taller than him, a lot heavier, but his body was peanut-shaped, pear-shaped, some kind of food-shaped, and he was ugly; stubble-haired with slit eyes under a heavy brow and a sour mouth like a small McDonald’s arch.

  So what was so big about Big Dap. What was so big was that when the shit went down, he didn’t flinch. In a world of fronters he thought with his hands and dealt with the fallout later. But wasn’t that what Tristan had done? So we’re down to uglier and bigger. And we’re down to people knowing about it or not . . .

  As the elevator opened on the ground floor, before stepping out into the day, Big Dap slowly turned his head in Tristan’s vague direction and sucked his teeth.

  “At least mine couldn’t get up afterwards,” Tristan
said a moment later, after he heard the door to the street whack against the mailboxes.

  • • •

  As soon as Bree spotted him at the bar, he could tell that she, like everybody else, had read the article.

  She crossed to him directly.

  “That was true?” Looking at him with those heart-stomping bright eyes.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Complicated?”

  It was over between them. Over before it began.

  “I don’t understand, why wouldn’t you help?”

  Eric couldn’t bring himself to speak.

  “I mean, he’s dead, you’re alive, and you knew him?”

  “Not that well.”

  Did he really just say that?

  She sounded like the cops now, like the father in the papers, like the official spokesperson for the contempt of this so-called neighborhood.

  Cocaine.

  He’d have made good money off it the first time if he hadn’t then had to host everybody buying it from him at his bar, if he hadn’t worried about everybody thinking of him as a great guy.

  Keep it tight this time. In and out.

  “Can I ask,” he sighed, “that stuff you had last night?”

  She stared at him. “What?”

  What was he thinking?

  “Nothing . . .”

  “I just don’t understand you,” she said, giving him a last look, then walking off to the lockers.

  He’d been out of the loop for a long time. An ounce these days must go for something like $700 to $900, which could be bagged up into twenties and forties, or straight hundred-dollar grams, times 28 is 2,800 bucks minus the 900 is 1,900 clear in a few days, and that was without even stepping on it.

  A discarded copy of the Post lay amid the debris of an unbused corner banquette. Eric walked over, slipped it under his arm, and retreated downstairs to the office.

  Otherwise it’s cowardly, it’s unconscionable, it’s unspeakable.