Potter's Field

by Rob Hart

  I laugh. He doesn’t realize I’m laughing because my mom gifted me a fucking car, like somehow I deserve people being nice to me. “Sure.”

  He gets up, slides his bare feet into a pair of slippers, and takes me to the front of the apartment. Grabs his keys off a hook on the wall and steps into the carpeted hallway. Bombay’s apartment is at the end of the hall in an angled alcove with two doors. He steps to the other door, opens it, and pushes inside.

  The apartment is dim and a little dusty. There’s some cast-off furniture. A couch and a small table. A bookshelf. The kitchen looks a little older than Bombay’s. But it’s generally the same shape. Two bedrooms. It’s a nice space, with a view of the bay through the living room windows.

  “I get it,” he says. “You don’t want to live on Staten Island. But honestly, why?”

  I walk through the apartment. It’s warm. The way old brick building hold the heat during winter. But more than that.

  “Just, think about it, maybe?” Bombay asks. “The landlord here loves me. If I recommend you, you’re in. This is a good building, Ash. There are roaches sometimes, but other than that?”

  I walk around the living room, my boots echoing on the hardwood floor. Walk through the galley kitchen, check the cabinets. Peek into the bathroom and bedroom. I try to come up with a good reason about why I shouldn’t live here.

  And I can’t.

  There are two types of people who grow up on Staten Island. The ones who look around and see a nowhere town and dream of a bigger life. And the ones who live and die here, who think trips on the ferry are some grand occasion. I fall hard into the first category, but I guess that was the problem.

  Assuming there needed to be categories.

  Doesn’t matter where you live. It only matters how.

  Being close to my mom, the people I love—that’s a life. This is the thing I’ve been waiting for. I didn’t realize I was waiting for it. It’s easy for me to fall down black holes, but in reality I am way luckier than I have any right to be.

  “Set it up,” I tell Bombay.

  He smiles, gives me a hug, slaps my back hard. “You serious?”

  “Yeah,” I tell him. “I’m tired of not having any roots. Time to lay some down.”

  “Got it. I’ll get everything taken care of. They might want to see some credit and employment history and shit…”

  “I’ve got cash.”

  “All right man, I’m going to go down to the office right now.” He hands me the key. “Lock up when you’re done. This is going to be so fucking cool. Living right next to each other, bro.”

  “I’m already crashing with you.”

  “Yeah, but now there’s less of a chance I’ll grow to resent you.”

  “Fair.”

  Bombay smiles and rushes out the door. I take the list out of my pocket.

  Find a place to live?

  Get a job?

  Find Spencer Chavez again

  See my mom

  Check on Crystal

  Today is turning out to be not so bad. Time to go make it worse.

  The sky outside Reese’s office looks like a cauldron. The DJ on the classic rock station says there’s a bit of snow coming today, but a lot more on tap for tomorrow. Up to a foot, possibly two. Lovely. This car will be basically useless.

  Reese’s office is a converted apartment on the second floor of a building on Forest Avenue. On the first floor there’s an optometrist. I ring the bell and the door buzzes. I climb the heavily-carpeted steps and knock on the door on the first landing, which has her name on it.

  Turquoise Reese. I swear. Coolest name ever.

  A voice inside: “Come in.”

  The front is a converted living room. There’s a couch and a few chairs. Nothing matches but it’s all very neat. There’s a young girl sitting on the couch, preteen, pink sneakers, hair pulled back into a ponytail. She’s reading a book.

  “You the secretary?” I ask.

  That earns me a laugh. “It’s my mom’s office. She said you can go back.”

  “How does she know I’m here?”

  “She said you were coming. The white boy who looked like he’d been beat up.”

  “What are you reading?”

  She tilts the book up at me. To Kill a Mockingbird.

  “For school,” she says.

  “That’s a good one,” I tell her, heading toward the back. I pass a room that’s full of filing cabinets, and a pristine bathroom, and make it to the room at the rear, which used to be a bedroom but now is an office. There’s a desk, some maps on the wall, lots of pictures: Reese in uniform. Reese with another man—husband?—and the little girl out front, at various life events. Graduations, plays, beaches.

  Reese is seated behind the desk, reading a thick stack of paperwork, peering down through a pair of glasses. When she sees me, she pulls the glasses and lets them fall against her chest, kept in place by a small chain looped around the back of her neck.

  “You’re here,” she says.

  “You asked me to stop by.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  “You scare me a little bit.”

  She laughs. Nods toward the open chair in front of the desk. “So would you like to explain to me why I got a phone call from a crook like Moretti to alibi you yesterday?”

  “Moretti is a crook?”

  “He’s a great lawyer if you’re guilty and you have money. I’m a little surprised to hear about the company you keep.”

  “Yesterday was the first I met him. He’s employed by a mutual acquaintance.”

  She gives me a terse smile. “Again, the company you keep.”

  “Childhood friend. Our paths diverged a long time ago. But he’s the one asked me to look for Spencer.”

  Reese tosses the bundle of paper onto the desk, sits back. Takes a deep breath. “Here’s where I’m at. This is a big heroin market. I’m sure you know that. Which means territory here is valuable. There’s a lot of money to make. Best I can figure it we’re in the middle of a coup.” She picks up a copy of the Post, tosses it at me. On the front page is Brian Marks. He’s posing with a woman, in a club or a bar. He’s dressed neatly, in a polo shirt, smiling wide.

  Brian Marks.

  Brick.

  The guy I took the gun from, outside Sanctuary.

  Mother-fuck. Biggest dealer on the island working in a treatment center. Was he scoping new customers? Keeping his ear to the ground? I don’t know. But the hell that seemed to come down on me out of nowhere suddenly makes a lot of sense. It wasn’t that I was skirting the edges. I fucked with the man himself.

  “He was the king,” Reese says. “Now someone else wants the crown.”

  “Kid Vicious.”

  She stops. “What?”

  “The new guy. Probably the guy who killed Brick, or had him killed. Kid Vicious. It’s a very dumb name and I’m almost ashamed to say it out loud.”

  “Huh,” she says, more to herself than to me. “I did not know that. Not even my contacts in the PD knew that.”

  It happens so brief, like a bolt of lightning on the horizon I can’t be sure I saw, but I think I see her smile.

  “Here’s what I’m trying to figure out,” she says. “How the hell do you fit in all this?”

  “The person who hired me, Spencer works for her,” I tell her.

  “And what does this person do?”

  “Nothing good.” Reese frowns, so I add, “I’m not doing it for her. I’m doing it for Spencer.”

  She searches my face for a minute, says, “No, that’s not entirely accurate, is it?”

  After a moment. “No, I guess it’s not. She offered me a lot of money.”

  She nods. “If you’re the kind of person who trucks with dealers, that puts us on opposite sides of this fight. I was born in this city. I saw crack pull it apart in the 80s and now it’s happening again. Same song, different verse. I will not sit by and do nothing. This job is getting a lot heavier than finding a missing kid.
”

  My turn to smile.

  I like her a lot.

  “I want to help,” I tell her.

  “Okay.”

  “That’s my answer. In the car, you asked me why I wanted to do this kind of work. It’s because I want to help.”

  She nods. Maybe not the right answer, but close enough. Closer than last time, at least.

  “How’d you find out about… what was that dumb name again?”

  “Kid Vicious. Heard it dropped a few times. I’ve got a lead on something else, too. Guy I know said he heard something big. Something that’s going to end up getting a lot of people dead. That’s my next stop after this.”

  “Will you share with me what you learned?”

  “Are we negotiating?”

  She breathes in through her nose. Stares at me, through me, to the back of the room, and then out the building, before returning her attention to me.

  “You’re persistent,” she says. “I like that. You’re resourceful. And you seem suited for a lot of the work I’m tired of doing. Those are all things that count in your favor. There’s a lot counting against. You’re hotheaded. That’s written all over your face. You don’t grasp the intricacies of this job. You think it’s a chance to be Batman without being rich or having to put on tights.”

  She trails off. Returns to it.

  “But sometimes it can be a little like that,” she says.

  “So what does that mean?”

  “Find out the thing you’re going to find out. Share it with me. Share with me anything else you find. And I will think about having a conversation where I consider bringing you on as an intern. I might still say no. The only reason I’m even taking it this far is that you walked in here and told me something I didn’t know. And that’s not nothing.”

  I stand up. Extend my hand.

  She gets up, shakes it.

  “Does this mean I get to call you Turk?”

  Her grip goes tight, eyes cold.

  “You call me that again…” she says.

  She doesn’t need to finish the sentence. I put my hands up and back away.

  “Sorry,” I tell her, and get the hell out of her office before she can change her mind. So high I feel like I’m floating.

  The snow is falling steadily by the time Bombay gets in the car. As I’m waiting for an opening in traffic he says, “I think we’re good to go on the apartment, bro.”

  “Went well?”

  “Yours if you want it.”

  I pull away from the curb, the roadway piling with a mixture of gray sludge and snow and salt. We used to have a term for that. New Yorked. How the snow was so pristine on its way down but within moments of landing soaked up the filth of the city.

  Still. There will always be clean snow to replace it.

  “So Timmy isn’t doing great?” Bombay asks.

  “He wants to make good on selling me out. Are you sure you want to come with me? I can drop you at a bar down the block or something. I don’t want to put you in a bad spot.”

  “No, I’d like to see Timmy. I remember thinking of reaching out after his folks died and I didn’t. Not that it probably would have changed anything. But I wish I did. And I don’t mind pitching in every now and again. I mean, you barely understand how to use a computer. You need me in your life.”

  “I know how to use a computer.”

  “Not nearly well enough.”

  “Congratulations on being a nerd.”

  We drive a little more.

  I reach across and smack Bombay on the thigh.

  “Thank you,” I tell him.

  “No problem, bro,” he says.

  Timmy’s car is in the driveway. I park my car on the street and our boots crunch in the snow on the way up the walkway. There are no lights on inside. I ring the bell. Wait a minute. Take out my phone and call Timmy. It goes to voicemail. Bombay stands on the walkway, bunched up in his coat, hands in his pockets, stamping his feet.

  I do not like this.

  He could be sleeping.

  It could be worse than that.

  “C’mon,” I tell him.

  We walk down the driveway. I keep an eye on the windows of the house next door, make sure no one is watching.

  “What are we doing?” Bombay asks.

  “Checking the back door.”

  “I don’t really feel comfortable with this.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  We get to the back door, find it’s locked. I take out my lock pick set, make sure no one can see us from where we’re standing, and go to work.

  “Now I really don’t feel comfortable with this,” Bombay says.

  “I do this shit all the time.”

  “Yeah, and look where it gets you. Plus, you’re white. This shit is a little different when you’re brown, bro.”

  “You’re with me. I’ll vouch for you.”

  “Doesn’t work like that.”

  The door clicks. I push it open. The house is tomb quiet. I call out, “Timmy.”

  Nothing.

  Fuck.

  We move through the kitchen, into the living room. Nothing out of order. I go back to the kitchen, grab the biggest knife in the block. This time I know where it is.

  “Whoa,” Bombay says.

  “We’re probably alone. Stay down here.”

  Bombay nods as I climb the stairs. Smelling the air. Listening. Anything that might spell ambush. See the door to Timmy’s room is open. Nudge it with my foot.

  I can smell him before I see him. Lying on the bed, arms and legs spread wide, needle sticking out of his arm. My hand goes to my pocket, to the naloxone, but it doesn’t matter. That stopped being an option hours ago.

  When I tell Bombay, his mouth falls open. He wants to say something, but instead of saying anything he sits on the corner of the couch and folds his hands, then presses them against his face.

  His first dead body. And he hasn’t even seen it. I forget how many this is for me. I feel bad about that. But also a whole bunch of people died in Prague so it’s hard to keep track. Give me a dark room and I remember all their faces.

  “We should probably go, right?” Bombay asks though his fingers.

  Used to be I would agree with that. And maybe it’s not the smartest thing to call the police for a dead body when I’m a person of interest in a major crimes investigation. But the reality is that Timmy doesn’t have anyone in this world. Which means no one’s going to find him. He’s going to sit here and rot until the neighbors notice the utility bills piling up. There’s no dignity in that.

  I could call it in anonymously, from a payphone down the street, or wherever there are still payphones left in this city, but there’s no dignity in that for me.

  “No,” I tell them. “I’m going to call the cops. You can go if you want. Take my car.”

  “I don’t want to bail on you.”

  “You’re clearly not comfortable with this.”

  He shrugs but doesn’t move from the couch.

  “People are going to die,” I say.

  Bombay looks up. “What?”

  “That’s what Timmy said. A lot of people are going to die. Now we don’t know how.”

  That makes me wonder about the circumstances of Timmy’s death. I know he tried to OD a few days ago, but that’s when he thought he killed me. Or at least, lent a helping hand. But he seemed much more optimistic, more ready to help. Maybe that needle sticking out his arm upstairs was an accident. Maybe it wasn’t.

  I check the front and back door. No signs of forced entry. It’d been snowing and there were no other footprints besides ours. I would have noticed that.

  In the kitchen is a laptop, plugged into the wall, the little green power indicator glowing green. I call Bombay and he comes in slowly, stepping like there might be a wild animal crouching out of sight, waiting to pounce.

  “What do you think?” I ask, gesturing toward the laptop.

  “Dude, I don’t want to fuck around with that. What if the
cops lift prints off it?”

  I pick up a kitchen towel and open drawers. After a few I find what I’m looking for: freezer bags. I pull out two and toss them on the counter.

  “Gloves,” I tell him.

  “This is getting into the realm of too much, bro.”

  “This could be important,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.”

  He closes his eyes, nods his head, and pulls the bags over his hands. Wiggles his fingers to make sure he can type, and pulls a USB stick out of his pocket.

  “You always travel with those?” I ask.

  “I have like four on me right now.”

  “Get to work. I’m going to check the rest of the house.”

  First stop is the basement, to make sure it’s clear. No broken windows, no door leading to the outside. Not a point of entry. I come upstairs, past Bombay, who’s poking the laptop, then head upstairs. All untouched, like when I was here the other day.

  I peek into the bedroom one more time.

  The room doesn’t turn up much. The covers are undone, sloppy. Could have been jerked around in a struggle, could be Timmy didn’t like making his bed. I certainly can’t remember the last time I made mine.

  Something about the scene is a bit odd.

  Something about the way it looks now, that doesn’t line up with the way it looked a few days ago, when I caught Timmy trying to kill himself.

  I look at him lying there, skin slack.

  And then it hits me.

  Last time the needle was in his left arm, probably because he’s right-handed.

  Now it’s in his right.

  I get a little closer and look at the crook of his left arm. Scattershot of open, scabbed-over, and scarred track marks. Could be he couldn’t find a good vein, or he wanted to balance out the wounds. There are a few stray injection points surrounding the needle poking out of his skin. Still, this could be significant.

  On the nightstand there’s a pile of clean needles, cotton balls, a bottle of water, and bent and charred spoon. I touch the spoon with the balled-up knuckle of my finger. Cold and dry. Not sure what that means. Maybe he used it recently, maybe he didn’t.