I pulled on the nearest pants and a denim jacket, assuring myself no personal memories would quake from modern day dope-dealing. No one would be hurt if I nosed into Blackhead’s business. I opened the door and let myself out to the alley. I knew the malls and Lou’s potential visit had something to do with my driving curiosity, but it didn’t matter. Warnings always held a fascination I found hard to resist.
Phil pretended angry but it didn’t wash. “Twice in a couple of weeks. When it rains, it pours.” “Think of it as monsoon season.”
“Let me guess—you’re working.” “Eating your food is never work.”
“The last time you ate here regular you were working. Then you wound up in the hospital.” Phil rubbed his face and wiped his hand on his apron. “What do you want me to dig up now?”
Before Phil bought into Charley’s, he’d been a cop. In the old days the restaurant was always packed with uniforms. Phil still had his connections, but I’d never learned why they’d stopped eating here.
“Musta been your fault,” I joked. “I curse you out every time the bullet hollers.” He looked at me quizzically. “They left the bullet in?”
“Yeah. They said it was easier to leave it where it was.”
He shook his head incredulously. “Fucking quacks. They just wanted the bed. Faster turnover, more money.”
“Come on, Phil, not hospitals.”
He started to bluster then noticed my smile. “Ahh, you’re yanking my chain.”
I nodded, but my mind was on his question. I hadn’t intended to ask him to locate Peter’s death report; but it wasn’t a bad idea. I didn’t think I could learn much. Though, if I kept it to myself, it couldn’t disturb Melanie. Maybe I’d get some background. Then I questioned whose background I wanted—Peter’s, Melanie’s, or my own. Before I could decide, Phil brought me back to the present. Hard.
“Your friend was in yesterday for breakfast.” “Say what?”
Red piped up, “Miss New York was here with her father.”
My appetite fell with a thud. “Oh yeah,” I said tentatively, caught in the intersection of their stares.
“Not her father, huh?” Red asked gently. “Not her father.”
Phil put my food down in front of me. “Ruined your breakfast, didn’t I?” “A little,” I admitted. “How about some coffee? Black.”
“I know how you like it.” He glanced at me while he poured. “I wouldn’t worry. He don’t look like much.”
I sipped at the steaming liquid. “Money don’t have to look like much.”
Phil walked to the booth and sat down next to Red. Every once in a while I felt their eyes on the back of my neck. To reduce everyone’s discomfort I spun my stool around. “Listen, maybe you could help me out.”
I told him what I wanted and he mulled over my request. “Twenty-year-old records, I don’t know. Shit, cops ain’t that anal. Anyhow, what the hell are you doing poking around The End? That place is a hellhole. Someone could put a bullet in a lot more critical location than where you got one now.”
“‘Anal’? Phil, you been closet-reading?” I tried to ignore the meat of his comment, especially since I already believed Blackhead’s case involved the drug world. It was one thing to poke into people’s lives, another to mess with fast-triggered AK47s.
“I was hoping they might put old records on microfilm or something. Like libraries.”
He shook his head. “How come you always sound like you just woke up after a long sleep? If the file is anywhere it’s on a computer, not microfilm. And I wouldn’t bet on the computer. Where the hell have you been?”
I just shrugged. Phil walked past me and went to work cleaning his grill. I sat and wondered how this broad, bald, short-order cook had come to represent modernity. It made me anxious to think of myself as that much of an anachronism.
He looked back over his shoulder. “What about the Black Avenger?” “Julie?”
A disgusted look crossed his face. “No, not Julius. Clifford. He could get what you want easier than me.”
“Oh no. No thanks, I’ll take a pass.”
He walked back over and leaned across the counter. Before he spoke, he looked past my shoulder. I turned, but the place was still empty except for Red, who sat in her booth reading the paper and playing with a teaspoon.
He looked down at me. “I don’t understand your reaction to Clifford. Word had it he thought you did a good job.”
I shook my head. “Hard to trust a cop who beats the living shit out of you.” “So you want me to poke around and jostle cobwebs?”
“‘Jostle cobwebs’?” I turned and called to Red, “Have you been reading to him, or has he been spending time with Julius?”
Red stood and stretched, her white waitress uniform pulling tight across her body. “You like that my honey is improving himself?”
She walked across the room and stood behind me. I felt a layer of heat between her chest and my back, and quelled a sudden impulse to rest my head on her shelf. Phil turned away, shaking his head. “Cut the crap, I’ve always read.”
I popped off the stool and stood alongside his lipsticked lady friend. “Yeah, but never talked like you did.”
Red looked at me and said with obvious pride, “Phil’s never been a dummy and now he doesn’t feel like he has to hide it.”
I smiled my agreement. I never knew whether she was going to rip at his balls or inflate them. Red sauntered back to her booth knowing full well what the two of us were watching. Almost sadly Phil switched his attention back to me. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be hanging around that cesspool, but I’ll talk to a few friends. What do you think you’re going to discover from a twenty-year-old police report, anyway?”
“Nothing, really. I’m actually more interested in what’s up my ex-client’s sleeve, but I gotta start somewhere.”
“You mean I gotta start somewhere.” He saw my face and added, “Don’t look like that, it was a joke. Like I said the last time, just keep eating here.”
Not surprisingly, it felt good to be out of the diner. The mention of Boots and Hal, then Clifford, submarined any desire to be out of the house. I like my humiliations private.
But privacy was rapidly becoming a premium. And would become more so, I discovered, when I found myself at home on the short end of a conversation with Lou.
“I thought I might visit over the holidays if that doesn’t interfere with your plans,” he said, already resentful, as if I could say no.
“Great,” I lied, then grew momentarily confused. The Jewish New Year had long since passed. “What holidays?”
“Thanksgiving. The celebration with the turkey, Turkey.”
It had been a long time since I’d celebrated anything, much less running Indians off their land. With a sinking stomach I lightened my voice and said, “It’s a fine time, Lou. I don’t have any plans.”
“Maybe you could invite some people. Between me and Mrs. Sullivan, we might give your oven a trial run?”
I hadn’t had a Thanksgiving party since Chana and Becky had died. The picture of Lou furiously slashing up a turkey, surrounded by Mrs. S and the rest of the building’s misfits, tightened my throat. But this was Lou’s first Thanksgiving without Martha. I swallowed. “You want people, Lou, I’ll get people. You have tickets?”
“Not yet. It won’t be a problem.”
“That’s good enough for me,” I said, working to keep apprehension out of my voice.
I heard his laugh boom through the wire. “Don’t bullshit me, Boychick. Nothing is ever good enough for you.”
I hung up the telephone, tried the television, but couldn’t sit still. A Thanksgiving celebration in this apartment seemed like a cruel joke, if not an oxymoron. But, like a moronic ox, I did what I was supposed to.
I got high and went upstairs to chat about killing a bird. Mrs. S was delighted by the idea. She had planned to cook for Charles and Richard anyway, and she adored Lou. His visits were often the highlight of he
r year. I was glad someone was happy. Then she insisted on a formal guest list, and our only acknowledged disagreement centered around Gloria.
I knew Mrs. S wasn’t thrilled about inviting Julius, so I gave in on Gloria. I didn’t think my first client, aka my ex-shrink, had any more desire to boogie with me than I with her. But Mrs. S would find that out for herself. I left when she started to talk about the menu and rejected my idea of pizzas: she didn’t think I was serious.
Back inside my apartment I hit the couch. I needed a new one but didn’t want to spend the time to break it in. The old one had the indentations of my body already memorized.
I’d have done the rest of the twenty-four in my personal version of fetal—on my back, eyes glued to the TV—but the telephone rang. Good doobie once begat good doobie twice. When I heard her voice I grew momentarily pleased, but the pleasure vanished as soon as I remembered her “father.”
“Boots, how are you?” I kept the enthusiasm in my tone. “I’m all right. What’s the matter with your voice?” “What do you mean?”
“You sound like you’re underwater, and we haven’t even begun to talk.” “‘Oh ye of little faith.’”
“Right. Maybe I should call you Rabbi?”
“Wrong religion for the quote.” I was running out of one-liners. Maybe I could just run out. I pictured Melanie on the other end of the wire but came back to reality in time to hear Boots’ question.
“How about supper?”
“Me or you?” I regretted my rejoinder as soon as I made it.
“Both of us, but after we eat.”
It sounded a lot better than it felt. What was the matter with me? The walls of my apartment were closing in, and I’d always welcomed her invitations before. What had happened to my desire to put our lousy breakfast behind us?
“I can’t Boots, I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t realize you booked in advance.” She kept her tone light, but there was no mistaking her displeasure.
“I’m sorry, hon, I’m working.” “Why don’t you stop by after?”
“I don’t know what time I’ll be finished.”
There was a pause at the other end. “What’s the matter, Matt?” Boots asked. “Are you still angry about Hal?”
“Of course not, Boots. It’s not part of the bargain.”
There was another long pause and I steeled myself for a waspish onslaught. All I got was a very soft, “It would be nice to see you, Matt.” Then I got a very dead telephone.
I sat at the kitchen table surrounded by my Fiesta Ware, wondering if there was any real reason to spit-shine my gun. Between swipes at the black barrel I smoked a joint and made little headway in understanding my hostility and sudden reluctance to spend time with Boots. Eventually, with everything but frustration exhausted, my mind skipped to The End.
I sketched Melanie’s face and form in my head, returning to her look of anguish during our talk of Peter. A nagging voice wondered if I matched that same look whenever Chana’s name came up: I hoped not. A mix of compassion and self-pity gripped me and I whacked at the second half of the equation. I already knew too much about feeling like a loser.
But I did want to know more about Melanie, to learn what had happened to her after I’d left The End. I had an urge to call Phil to see if he’d heard anything about Peter’s accident, but knew it pointless. He would need more time. My morbid curiosity would have to wait.
It wasn’t only curiosity that made me impatient. Boots’ telephone call had punched a hole through my couch daze and I wanted out of the house. My mind jumped to the director of Hope House, Jonathan, Melanie’s stepfather. Maybe I had a shot at a two-for-one: some background about her, and information about Emil and his role in The End’s drug network.
I was so pleased with my idea that I paid little attention to my misgivings. I could always quit; the only meter running was my own.
I stood, smudged the gleam on the gun with my fingers, and hung it in the holster on the back of the wooden kitchen chair. I often wondered what favor my grandfather had performed in return for chairs from Dutch Schultz’s bar. But I’d never really felt comfortable asking. Mostly I saw my grandfather sitting at a small table in the back of his tavern, playing pinochle. He never seemed to be in a talking mood when money or cards whipped around a table.
I scurried to gather my things. If I stayed inside much longer I’d turn maudlin. Despite a moment’s regret about leaving the cozy steam heat of my apartment, it was time to go.
I drove to The End, parked the car on a side street, and walked slowly to Hope House. The agency wasn’t where I remembered, but I found it a few blocks north. I stood facing a four-story dark red brick house, a once elegant mansion that now proclaimed “institution.” A small group of men in their late teens and early twenties were loitering on the steps, smoking. They did not look like institutional bureaucrats; they looked mean.
And meaner still when I crossed the street, angling toward the steps. I rammed my body against the stiff wind and tried to minimize eye contact. The guys on the stairs looked like they could get annoyed easy—real easy.
Eyeballed with sullen silence, I nodded and shuffled carefully around the two on the lower steps. I slowed, tense and watchful, as the top two reluctantly moved aside. I opened the large door and stepped away from the wordless confrontation into a large room alive with noise and activity.
The back half of the room was stacked with occupied metal bunk beds. About half a dozen people milled around a small Goodwill furnished living room area. I walked to a long telephone reception station where four people sat behind a waist-high plywood “wall” decorated with hand-drawn pictures depicting various forms of urban blight. Behind the plywood cheer, right where a big orange cartoon crane was shown snapping its jaws on a building bulging with people, two men were talking on telephones. The other man and woman huddled together in earnest conversation. All four seemed oblivious to my presence.
I coughed, and the guy who wasn’t on the phone looked up smiling. “Sorry about the rudeness, but I just got off a heavy call and needed to process.”
“Yeah, making appointments puts a real load on.” This kid looked less formidable than the tackheads on the steps.
“Making appointments?”
I grew momentarily confused. “Isn’t this Hope House?”
“Yes, but this side of the building is the Drop-in Center and Helpline. You’re looking for Administration, aren’t you?”
I nodded and followed his hand with my eyes. If I hadn’t been so uptight about the Welcome Committee outside I’d have seen the sign. I reminded myself I was here as a detective: rumor had it alert was part of the job.
I walked into a small room housing the real receptionist. There were bulges in the midsection of her black spandex jumpsuit and she had a beehive of tie-dyed hair. I liked the inter-decade look. Once she hung up the phone she even seemed interested. “Can I help you?”
Interest didn’t always mean originality. “I hope so. I’d like to see Jonathan.”
She pulled a large book from the side of her messy, oversized desk, and put on a pair of speckled cat’s-eye glasses. She looked in the book, then up over her glasses. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No, I don’t.”
The black spandex rippled as she sat up straighter. “Would you like to make one?” “Only if it’s for now.”
She pushed her glasses up to just below the multi-color line. “Are you for real? When you’re talking Jonathan Barrie, we’re talking serious busy.”
“I know what you mean. Good social workers are like rust; they never sleep.”
“You can’t just blow in here and expect to see Mr. Barrie,” she said, the friendliness disappearing. “Even the pols call first.”
For emphasis she popped two pieces of Dentyne into her mouth and chewed glumly in my direction. She looked tired, as if she’d already seen one too many crackpots.
For a moment I considered giving up, then had an idea. I glan
ced at the nameplate that perched precariously on the corner of her desk. “Well, Sally, I’m definitely not a politician.”
She almost smiled. “I can tell.”
I grinned. “Can we give it a try? Tell Mr. Barrie that Matthew Jacob would like to see him about Peter Knight.”
She pushed her glasses back down. “Aren’t you thinking of Melanie Knight?”
I shrugged off her doubt. “Please, just tell him Matthew Jacob is here about Peter Knight.” She shook her head, but picked up the telephone and punched a button. She cupped the mouthpiece with her hand and mumbled. After a moment she hung up and looked at me with surprised eyes. “Well Mr. Jacob, you might not be the Mayor, but you know something I don’t. Jonathan says he’ll be right down.”
I nodded and walked over to a magazine rack. But before I could thumb through S.I.’s swimsuit issue, I heard my name and turned around.
“Matthew Jacobs?” “Jacob. Without an ‘s.’”
“Sorry. I’m Jonathan Barrie. I’m very pleased to meet you.” He was about five-foot-ten, with thick, black, curly hair generously flecked with gray. It went well with the heavy, black, unbuttoned cardigan he wore over a maroon turtleneck. Dark green wide wales completed the ensemble. Jonathan Barrie might not be “just any social worker” but he sure as hell dressed the part. He reminded me of Judd Hirsch in Ordinary People. I walked over and stuck out my hand. “It’s too early for you to be very pleased.”
Barrie grabbed my hand, shook it firmly, then let it go. “Oh, I don’t think so,” he said, sounding like he knew something I didn’t.
He turned toward Sally. “Can we use your office? I’d like to talk privately with Mr. Jacob.” He waited quietly while Sally left, then looked at me. “This is the only room in the building that has a door. I want our administrators to remember who they’re working for.” A small brisk smile covered his face. “I especially like to watch the looks on our funding sources when somebody from the crash area interrupts a meeting. It usually helps speed our discussions.”
I smiled as he waved me to the small couch. He sat the wrong way on a folding chair, crossing his arms along the top. A shadow crossed his face. “Sally said something about Peter Knight.”
The Complete Matt Jacob Series Page 35
