“I’m not.”
He carefully put the joint on the rim of the ashtray and watched as it slowly burned itself out. He took another drink of the bourbon and lit a cigarette. Everything seemed to be moving in three-quarters time.
“How is your body?”
“You heard, huh?”
“Be hard not to.”
“It seems like people around here have been confusing humiliation with heroism. I’m all right. Down to twice a day reminders. Couple more days it’ll be normal.”
“Nothing’s ever normal with you. Why did it go down?”
“I don’t know. The closest I come has the police protecting whoever’s been breaking into the building I’m interested in.”
He raised his eyebrows underneath a cloud of smoke. “Police. Why police?”
I summarized the beating and yesterday’s discussion with the black guy. “Neither of them showed a badge or warrant but something inside of me is certain.” I lit another cigarette. Talk of the beating had gotten me angry. The glowing tip of the joint in the brown glass ashtray was fading. I wanted some before it extinguished but pushed the feeling away. Julius just sat there with his fucking eyes closed. At least he didn’t go for another toke. I’d a had my hand out if he had.
He opened his eyes. “What do you suppose I can do?”
“You can think. And you know what to think about. See, I can’t get it to add. Whoever is busting in doesn’t seem to realize the cops are buffering him. He keeps trying to cover his tracks.”
“Or making it look that way.”
“Maybe. But why twice? He could have spent the entire night there if he knew he was protected.
“Maybe he had to git home to his momma.”
“No curfew in this town, Boss. Why would police cover for someone who isn’t a cop?”
“Did you describe the meat to Phil?”
“No. The guy in the car tried to squeeze me about where I got the report. I managed to talk my way out of answering and I haven’t wanted to chance leading anyone to Phil. Hell, he did me a favor; I don’t want to get him fucked.”
Julius relit the joint. “This time give me a detailed painting of the situation and the tag team.”
I did the best I could. When I was studying for the ticket I spent most of the time with the gun. I had imagined that little things, like detecting, came with common sense. Of course back then I didn’t have any. Now it was on-the-job training. Julius just sat there and listened to my account of Dr. James’ case and the beating. I figured Simon was personal business.
The only questions he asked were about the pit bull’s shoes. At first I wondered whether he was ribbing me about kissing floor, but he stayed serious and so did I. When I finished, a good chunk of my anger had dissipated. I hoped he would light the joint. He did. We passed the dope back and forth. It almost seemed like the other night when we smoked together at my place. But it wasn’t. The beating, my deepening involvement with the cases—I was starting to think of them as cases—added a somber note nonexistent the last time.
“Your jokes are missing.”
“I’m not used to being trashed in my own house.”
“What do you want to do about it?”
I took a deep inhale on the roach and held my breath. I exhaled slowly. “I don’t know. Right now I want to know what it’s about. Later I can think about what to do.”
“If you keep on with this you got to be ready to do it all.”
“What’s all?”
“Everything, I mean everything.” His voice had grown even softer. It sent a chill through me. “Jail, Mr. Jacob. How’s that for starters? You be fucking with cops that’s where you got a good chance of getting.”
He opened his eyes a little wider. “This is a very grownup game, slumlord. You don’t get a little bit pregnant.” His voice became a sarcastic hiss that stung like the spray from a riot hose. “So you got hit. You still got all your parts and most of your blood. Let it go. Violence is like this, man. You are involved or you are not. There’s plenty of crossover but, if you are going to live on my side of the fence, you best be ready to do it all. You got to give a beating as well as take one.”
His voice lost all traces of sarcasm. It was almost tender. “Are you ready, Matthew, to give a beating? Feel your hands break someone else’s bone? See a piece of skin rip off a body? Crush an eye with your boot? You don’t even wear boots, do you? The guy that kicked you was wearing a boot. Are you ready to shoot someone and watch the life drip out of him? Let it go. You are a housekeeper, slumlord, not an asskicker.”
I felt stunned. Julie wasn’t the first to tell me not to get involved, everyone was doing that. But he was the first to give me good reasons. Real good reasons. I sat there for a long time thinking. Every once in a while Julius would lean forward and nip from the bottle or light a cigarette. I sat there thinking for a long time. He didn’t rush me.
“You know, I’ve been giving a friend of mine similar advice about a problem and all he keeps telling me is he can’t help it.”
Julius leaned back in his chair and gave me his best lizard imitation. “Sounds like your friend has woman trouble.”
I grinned. “That’s the trouble with advice from you. You’re too fucking smart to ignore.”
“But ignore me you will.”
“I can’t help it.” I lit a cigarette. “When I was growing up, the house was a free-fire zone. Anything went. I spent my time trying to figure out what was going on and stay ahead of it. It kept me alive, but didn’t prevent me from running my own life into the ground once I got out. I caught a reprieve, had my guts torn out again, and I’m back here hiding in a basement. I haven’t been interested in much of anything and that’s the way I thought I was going to play out the string. Only this shit interests me.” I let out a long breath. For a moment I wondered if I had just hired a new shrink.
“The shit that interests you might also kill you.”
“Probably not.”
“And the practicalities?”
“Practicalities? Julius, from you? Please, get us more dope.”
He smiled but didn’t move.
“The practicalities worry me. There are serious limitations to my learn-as-I-go method so I’m trying to ease into it.”
“Ease might not be slow enough.”
“It’s got to be. The violence scares me and jail worse. I intend to avoid both.”
“You do this detective work for real, not just in your mind, sooner or later you can’t avoid nothing. That’s what I been trying to tell you and what you spent all this time ignoring.”
“I’m not ignoring it. I just don’t know what to do with it. I’m not thinking beyond this situation and I don’t think I’m involved with something that’s going to get me killed or thrown in jail. Right now all I want to know is what the hell is going on.” I shrugged. “Later is later. It’ll take care of itself. Will you please roar the damn pipe?”
“You waited this long you can wait a little longer. You didn’t come marching down here with your naked feet to ask permission to do something you were going to do anyway.”
“I want to stay away from Phil, but I want to find out whether the Bobbsey twins are freelancing, or if there is something going on in the Department. You know, there could be a simple explanation for all of this.”
It was Julius’ turn to think. I drank a little bourbon to quench my thirst. It didn’t work but it felt good going down so I had another. I lit a cigarette and waited.
“I’m comfortable with you, slumlord. We ain’t what I’d call friends, but there’s not too many people I’ll share a high with. When you first got here you be like something out of a crazy house. Like they did surgery on your head. I seen you recover, but you’re still one tired dude.
“I thought you must be some kind of outlaw for me to feel easy with you, but my only clue was that dead license. Hearing that you’re waking up that license, that’s good and bad. Makes me feel more comfortable sharing my hig
h. But it’s gonna change you. And you’re too green to know it.”
I wasn’t too green to know he was telling the truth, just too green to let it stop me. I waited for him to say something about my request.
“I liked what you told me about Phil. The way I see outlaws is you got two types. Decent ones and assholes. Has to do with character, not something you learn. Doesn’t matter which side of the law you’re on either. Your attitude about covering Phil is good character.”
For a moment I was hurtled back in time to my elementary school where they talked a lot about character. But they never talked about it as part of an outlaw’s makeup. Nor did they divide the world into decents and assholes.
Coming from anyone else the idea might have been funny, but sitting across the table from me was a man I believed did all the things he asked me if I could do. I just sat still and smoked.
He spoke in a clipped, unaccented, business tone. “I will ask around and see if I can find anything out. I doubt I can, but I will try. If I do hear about something there won’t be any simple answers. Prepare yourself for that. If you want more dope I will be happy to get some. If not, will you go the fuck away and let me sleep?”
“I can’t go out for dinner, I already have an engagement.”
I knew it was a dumb idea but when I got home from Julius’ the rest of the day and night stretched out before me like a Nebraska highway. I hadn’t wanted to do the ride alone. As soon as she turned me down I tried to remember where I’d put the coke.
“Well?”
I was ready with a snappy rejoinder. “Well what?”
“You are an oaf. You ask me out for dinner a couple of hours from now and because I have an engagement you act like a Turkish prison guard ripped out your tongue.”
“Yeah, you’re right. It was a bad idea.”
“No, it was a good idea. I’m not looking for apologies, I want a little more insistence.”
I could lose my breath trying to keep up with her. “I’m not sure I understand you.”
“Boy, you can say that again! What about ‘How long is your engagement supposed to last?’ Or, ‘Break the engagement.’ Anything but dead air. Were you really only looking for company while you ate?”
A shaft of sunlight through the clouds. “Okay, I’ll bite. How long will your engagement last?”
“Until my after-dinner headache. Where do you want to meet?”
She seemed to have lost a lot of caution between Wednesday and Friday. So had I. “I don’t know. Where are you going to dinner?”
The place she named was the kind that, no matter how old I was, always made me feel like a kid. I suggested we meet at Amalfi’s at nine.
There was a long pause. When she spoke her tone sounded guarded. “I’ll be overdressed.”
“I’ll even it out.”
She started to speak then stopped. There was another long pause during which I thought she was going to change her mind about the evening. I went back to thinking about the coke, but before I made any headway she said, “See you later,” and was gone.
I was left holding a dead telephone and reaching for my subsiding excitement. It had been a long time since I’d slept with anyone. I lit a cigarette, and remembered where I had hidden the cocaine. I thought about doing a line, but didn’t want to add to the crash I was already experiencing from the bourbon and dope. At least this way I’d be in better shape to start over again later.
I tinkered with one of my radios to kill time, and even managed to finish the laundry. There were no notes under the door from any of the tenants so I guessed there were no complaints. It felt like not being missed. I thought about dropping in on Mrs. Sullivan but I couldn’t face more questions about the cases. I decided to nap. I was hoping for a long night.
Sleep came and went in between thinking about my morning with Julius. I wondered about my stubbornness. A series of unwanted requests from Simon and Dr. James, requests which I resisted and resented, had become a lifeline. Julius’ prophecies of external violence and horror notwithstanding, it was an unknown interior edge I was flirting with. I guessed I would wait and see what happened.
What happened was a call from Dr. James. “Have you discovered anything yet?” There was excitement in her voice.
“I’m working on it, Dr. James.”
“Come on Matthew, I thought we were on a first-name basis.”
“Okay, Gloria. Do you want to tell me what you’re excited about?”
“What did you say?”
“What is it, Gloria?” It was eight o’clock, and I wanted to walk to Amalfi’s. Dr. James was a case, and tonight I didn’t want to work.
She was also my shrink and it almost felt like my mother calling right before a big date.
“You were wrong about the other offices.” Her voice sounded triumphant.
“What about the other offices?”
“They had records stolen as well. You said the thief got what he was looking for in my office and just used the others to throw off the police. Now that we know he took other people’s records we don’t have to believe it was mine he wanted.”
I wasn’t going to argue with her; she might be right. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me.”
“I’m telling you that we don’t have to be frantic about this.”
“Were we?”
She laughed. “I was. Heck, I even considered letting you look at my files. Thank god I didn’t.”
“You seem pretty sure that you are out of the woods.”
“I’m not positive, but I hope so.”
“So now that you figure you’re off the hook you don’t think I should continue, is that it?”
She laughed again. The other offices’ stolen records certainly cheered her up. “No, I want you to continue. I’m not sure I’m off the hook; it’s just not certain that I’m on it.”
Sometimes inspiration hits in the oddest moments. “Is the decision to continue one you made yourself, or was it a collective one?”
“What do you mean collective?”
“I mean Holmes. Eban Holmes. Was the decision for me to continue to work the case made during some therapeutic consultation with Eban Holmes?”
Her voice grew less cheerful. “I did talk with Dr. Holmes about it, yes, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
I couldn’t really blame her but I hadn’t wanted to be a case tonight either. I felt deflated. “Look, I gotta go. I’m meeting somebody. I’ll call you after I have a chance to think about what you’ve said.”
“What’s the matter? You suddenly sound very tired. It’s a tone I recognize.”
“The drugs are coming on.”
“What? What is it that you’re using now?”
“Nothing.” I forced some enthusiasm into my voice. “I was just kidding. I have to meet someone and I’m running late. Really. I’ll call you.”
“I don’t trust what you’re telling me. I know you are upset that I spoke with Dr. Holmes. Are you uneasy about continuing the investigation under these circumstances?”
“Don’t be silly, Gloria, nothing’s bothering me. I want to continue.” I couldn’t help myself. “It’ll be nice to have the check roll in the opposite direction.”
“Mr. Jacob.”
“Matt, Gloria, Matt. Hey, I gotta be able to joke with my clients. Look, I’m really late. I’ll call you.”
The phone rang a moment or two after I hung up. If it was Dr. James as I suspected, fuck her. If it was Boots I didn’t want to know about it.
I finished getting dressed with a fair amount of slammed doors and drawers. The image of Dr. James and Eban Holmes huddled, strategizing about the health and well-being of a patient in an awkward moment of his patienthood, infuriated me. For a moment I wondered whether the two of them might have plotted the burglaries as some avant-garde therapeutic approach.
That’s when I knew I needed to relax. I smoked half a joint, put it down, and rolled three more. The dope burned itself out befo
re I finished, so I relit it and had a couple more hits. I debated about doing a line of the coke and compromised by pouring a bit onto the side of my hand and taking a little toot. I put the coke and dope into my jacket pocket, lit a cigarette, and went out the kitchen door into the alley.
The cool, early morning ocean breeze had long since faded. The night air hung thick and heavy. Air to walk through, not in. I had spare time to get to Amalfi’s so I wandered over to the park to find a basketball game. The lights were on and so were the players. Roberto Clemente Park could legitimately boast having the best street ball in the city. The same could not be said of the court itself. One basket was twisted on a downward angle and the other rattled anytime someone ran near it. The secondary courts were unusable. It made me angry.
During a pretty fast break the coke hit. I had been thirty years old before I saw a lead guard do a between the legs crossover dribble. A decade later eighth graders had it down cold. Maybe Western civilization really did boil down to Jesus, Marx, Einstein, Freud, and Julius Irving.
I decided to move on. I had taken the right amount of drugs. My body didn’t hurt and my sweat felt comfortable. I promised myself that I’d start working out again tomorrow. Or at least soon.
I got to the Arch and stood there. The hookers stood in small clusters on the Boylston side of the structure. Symphony nights they huddled on the park side. Since they began cleaning up lower downtown the Arch had become a comfortable place to work. Word was out that drugs and ripoffs would be dealt with harshly. Word was also out that discreet hustling would be permitted as long as it remained discreet. A simple service for the suburban rich.
Right after the accident, when I spent a lot of time walking around town, I’d sometimes pick a Symphony night to sit on a stoop by the Arch and watch the women work. After a while I even learned some names.
I was reminded that those nights were long ago the minute I walked into the tavern. Instead of the huge oval mahogany bar that had dominated the front, the place had turned into a restaurant. In front of me was an array of tables with clean-cut people sitting at them. I stood there for a moment, sweating and wondering where to go when a dark gloved hand waved from the rear. I looked at the clock on the wall with surprise. I was late.
The Complete Matt Jacob Series Page 14
