“Have ya seen any of the old crowd?”
“Nah. And that guy I used to date, Roger, well, he never made it back,” she said somberly. She rubbed her arm across her face to dry the tears.
“Oh? Julie, I’m sorry.” Jack felt edgy, biting into his lower lip. “Ya know I lost a lot of good buddies over there.” He turned away pursing his lips. The hands on the wall clock pointed at 3 p.m., and the school bell clanged. The sound of the students’s noisy dismissal filtered into the gym. He faced Julie again. Her eyes glistened in the mid-afternoon light that poured through the wired window. When it was quiet again, Jack interrupted the long reflective moment, “Could ya play me somethin’ on the piano?”
Julie smiled ear-to-ear. “I don’t think so. Was never that good on the piano. You know the violin was my thing.”
“I’m home, Julie. Come on... one time, for me?”
Julie thought for a moment and then ambled over to an upright in the corner of the room, lifted its oak keyboard cover and sat down. “I haven’t played... for a couple of years.”
Barely twenty-six, Julie sat in a janitor’s smock, her hair carelessly wrapped in a brown bun, and her delicate white hands resting on off-white and chipped ivories. The notes sounded sharp as she mapped out the approach for something resembling a melody with her good hand and a low note with a few good fingers. High notes haltingly pinged off the soundboard, then burst into a minor scale—a deep D-flat in the left hand resonated with a voice weakened by years of longing: “You'll never know just how much I miss you.” Though tears streamed down her cheeks, Julie suddenly appeared younger than she had the moment before. The music transported Jack back to a mansion of debutantes with coquettish smiles, and if Jack had had any intentions of telling Julie what he know about Roger, he decided to bury them then and there.
***
After talking to Jack on the phone, Julie went home. The heat stifled the apartment, so she decided to pack a small overnight bag and sleep in Jack’s spare room. About nine that night, she took the bus to Willa Street, crossed the street, walked past the row of faded brown and white three story houses that hadn’t been painted in a generation. The day had threatened thunderstorms. It was close to dark and the houses appeared older than usual. Except for a relative few, most people rented. The once well-kept lawns were now hardpan. The flowerbeds of her childhood were gullies of stagnant rainwater. The maple trees along the sidewalks were fat around the trunk and full of brown and shriveled leaves. Everything on Willa Street was reflective of everything else, so the hard brown dirt made the dented aluminum garbage cans at the curb appear fatter than normal, the fatter garbage cans made the street look narrower and the narrower street pushed back the clock.
When she arrived at the house shades were drawn, same as a few days before when she had kept Jack from blowing out his brains.
“Jack, you here? Where are you?” Her eyes adjusted to the outline of familiar objects and odd shadows that haunted the hallway. Even though it was warm outside, the air conditioning made her shiver.
She stopped before the hall mirror, which reflected bloodshot eyes held in place by gray, puffy bags and a crease emerging at the bottom of her nose and outlining her mouth before finally disappearing beneath her chin. She pressed against the flesh that joined her jaw to her throat. She went to the kitchen to shut off the air conditioner, ran upstairs, searched the rooms and returned to the living room to flop in Nonna’s overstuffed chair. In an ashtray on the end table, a long-ash cigarette had burned itself out. Her eyes moved over the knickknacks and the pictures on end-tables. Slowly, the room darkened and the images and bric-a-brac of a life passing too quickly disappeared into oblique shadows and silhouettes. Jack never showed.
***
Earlier in the day, Jack had showered and dressed, grudgingly intending to go to court as ordered in the subpoena. He planned to answer much in the way he had seen on T.V. when the witness “can’t remember.” But as he was leaving the phone rang, and a man on the other end who identified himself as Mr. Travers and was connected to the case, told him he did not need to appear as indicated in the subpoena. The caller mentioned he that wanted to meet Jack later in the day. Jack felt relieved and although the caller refused to tell him specifically why he wanted to talk, Jack agreed to meet at the Silver Streak Diner at 8:30 that night.
About twenty minutes past eight, Jack was walking toward the diner when a dark blue Chevy four door pulled alongside him, two men in the front seat, window down. The driver asked, “Yo, buddy, you Jack O’Conner?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I’m Bud, Bud Travers. We spoke.”
“I was going down to the diner.”
“Figured we’d grab a beer someplace on Barnum. Hop in.”
They looked like cops, mid thirties. Jack climbed in. Travers said reflexively, “This is Steve Jones.” The man looked straight ahead, making Jack feel all the more wary.
Jack leaned forward in the seat and asked anxiously. “What’s this about?”
“Let’s wait till we get there,” Travers said guardedly. Jack saw Jones looking at him through the rearview.
“You cops?”
“Sort of. We work for the government, US Government.”
Jones was wearing a summer suit with a white shirt and open collar. He was a big tall guy with light colored hair—hard for Jack to judge his height, but had to be over two hundred pounds. Travers, a smaller, swarthy man, sat sphinx-like.
The car turned down Barnum, drove about a mile into the rear of a dirty brick building with a sign: Prince Harry Bar and Grille. The parking lot was dark with two cars parked against the building. Being familiar with the place, Jack breathed a little easier. As Jack opened the door Travers rested his arm on the back of the seat, “Wait, before we get out, let me tell you why we wanted to talk.”
Jack slid behind the driver’s seat. Travers had small, steely eyes reminiscent of a Doberman. “We’ve been following the Girardin case and have reason to believe that this Art Girardin guy is a flake... and— ”
Jack interrupted. “Wait, let’s start over. Who’re you guys?”
“We work for the government, like I said,” Travers replied in a tone that riled Jack.
“But the government’s big.”
“Steve and me, we’re part of DIS.”
“And what’s that?”
“Defense Intelligence Service,” Travers responded, sounding like a cop.
“Army, Navy, what?”
“Defense.”
“Ok, so what’s that gotta do with me?”
“You can’t help the situation, especially, if some shyster lawyer gets you on the stand, twists your memory—you know, making you look like a whatcha-call-it turncoat.”
Jack’s face began to flush. “Look, Mack, I don’t like the way this is startin’ off.”
“Aw’right, leave that aside.”
“Get to the fucking point.”
“Bottom line? We’re gonna buy you a ticket for a vaca’, down south a few weeks,” said Travers.
“Leave tonight,” Jones snickered.
Jack grinned cautiously. “Are you guys shittin’ me?”
“Nope, dead serious.” Travers pulled his thin lips back, like a dead man grinning.
Jack did not like the way Travers said it.
“Well, I’d have to think it over.”
Traver’s tightened his jaw. “Ok, you got about two minutes, and Mr. O’Conner, I might add... little choice.”
“Look, Travers, I ain’t got no beef with you guys. I don’t even know who the Christ you are. I’m not even sure I’d help Girardin’s side, but I don’t like being told I gotta do anything.”
“Jack, we’re trying to do this quick and professional. I’m told you’re a smart guy, so I decided not to beat around the bush,” he said, his face relaxing.
“Who told you?” Jack asked, showing concern.
“That’s something we can’t discuss, but we’d pay for the entire trip.
Wanna take a girlfriend, we can arrange that, too. But be fast. Tomorrow, latest. Come on, all expenses.”
“I appreciate that, but I ain’t making no decision tonight.”
With that, Jack left the car and walked toward the bar. Just before he reached the rear door he felt a large hand grab his shoulder. He swung around: it was Jones, all 6’4”, forty waist.
“Wait a minute buster, get back in the car, so we can work this out.”
“Fuck you.” Jack shook off his hand and reached for the bar door. Jones’ beefy forearm corralled his neck. Jack yelled, “What the fuck you doing, you fat bastard?” He struggled, but the giant had him in a bear grip. Travers came around the front.
“Look O’Conner make it easy on yourself.”
“What the fu—?” Jack screamed.
Before he finished his expletive an air-deflating blow slammed into his solar plexus. As he gasped for air, a fist came across his jaw. He remembered nothing else, until he woke up in the middle of the night, smelling like gin, uniformed cops on each side. When he saw the uniforms, he bolted, but they tackled him. He swung at them and they cold cocked him.
Dungeons Here and There
WHEN JACK HADN’T APPEARED IN COURT ON MONDAY according to the subpoena the sheriff served the morning he walked back from the diner, Nick was not overly concerned, because Jack actually knowing Roger Girardin had seemed like a long shot. But Jaeger’s testimony changed all that. The O’Conner he had testified as helping him out of a jam, may well have been Jack Prado O’Conner. On Thursday, Nick had Mitch tell the oversized sheriff to leave a second subpoena ordering him to court on Friday. When Jack failed to show Friday, the first item on Nick’s weekend “to do” list was to find O’Conner. He had to determine if he needed Jack to testify about Jaeger’s unlikely claim that Girardin had died on the ridge. He called Jack’s phone Saturday and Sunday. He sat back wondering what to do next, flipped open a phone book, found Prado, and called a half-dozen names, none related to Jack. But on the seventh call heard, “Yes, Jack Prado. He’s my husband.”
Bingo! “Is he there?” Nick asked.
“No, he’s not.”
“Will he be home later?”
“No, I don’t think so, he doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Can you tell me where I might find him?”
At first, Anna wasn’t interested in talking about her husband, especially to a lawyer, but reluctantly she volunteered that Jack had been depressed, drinking hard, passing out.
“I learned he was arrested Friday night. Police told me he was drunk at the rail yard, on the tracks. You know, at the far end of Willa Street. Claimed they yelled out. He ran, slugged a cop.”
“Is he in lock-up at the police station?”
“I don’t know. All I know’s he’s in jail.”
Nick ran Jack down at the county jail, but decided to wait until Monday morning to catch him at the arraignment.
***
On local maps a small rectangle points to the red, granite courthouse on the corner of East Main and Hill Street. It was built in 1848, a time when “Victorian” stood for more than an architectural style—especially to convicts sentenced to hard labor or the gallows. Nick went into the prosecutor’s office and asked to see Jack’s arrest report. He learned that later in the morning he would be charged with resisting arrest, assaulting an officer and criminal trespass. The judge would be familiar with the place, the rail yard where the inebriated homeless had sought refuge in abandoned boxcars for decades. Depending on his view of cops, the railroad, the homeless and the man standing in front of him, he would decide whether to set the bond so high Jack would be held over for trial or to let him walk. In either case, to be disposed of down the line, an immaterial artifact on one scale-pan of a balance beam held by none other than that blind woman called Justice. After reading the file, Nick proceeded to lock-up to find Jack.
Off the central rotunda, marbled busts of past jurists led the public to three courtrooms, a dozen offices, two Lysol-laden lavatories and a maze of oak planked dark hallways. Nick, in pinstriped suit and with briefcase in hand, walked down one hallway to a steel door, behind which was a stairwell to the catacombs below the courtrooms. To get into the stairwell, Nick had to know the jailer—who only admitted lawyers, cops and clerks. In the forty years on the job, the guard never had to decide whether judges were permitted below.
“Who you here for?”
“A Jack Prado? No, make that O’Conner, Jack O’Conner.”
The guard put his un-calloused hand behind his extended derrière to retrieve a chain with a key. Nick passed through the opening and hesitated for a few seconds, before the tunnel-like flight of smoothly worn granite stairs that disappeared into darkness.
On the first landing, Nick encountered a rancid bouquet of alcohol, sweat, urine, feces and vomit. At the bottom of the stairwell, the air thickened, water dripping along one side into a fetid puddle. Nick could no longer hold his breath. A few six-by-six cells held two prisoners each, one fourteen-by-fourteen cell held eighteen. Another held a solitary man accused of murder, another a woman, and yet another a man sick beyond drunken heaves. No vacancies. A somber, living tomb, where except for the erratic groans and moans of self pity and despair, the tenants hear no evil and see no evil, and on this day were oblivious to Nick’s presence.
As Nick got closer to his destination he detected an undercurrent of broken mumbling.
“Cracker Jacker, what’re ya gonna do, those blind will one day see you, please, leave me the sea... Jack, Jack, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, All work and no play. Easy Mac, cracker Jack... he’s a prick.”
Nick saw a man sitting on the edge of the bunk, his elbows on his knee, head on his hands, swaying slightly back and forth.
“Jack. Jack O’Conner?”
The mumbling stopped. Jack’s head snapped up, his face drawn and unshaven. A shiner, a swollen right cheek, a split lip and bloodshot eyes—maybe from crying, or maybe from years of drugs and alcohol. Nick could not be sure. He had met many men in this place, most with faces summing up a past of brutal self destruction; a self-defeatist life of several interminable lifetimes.
“Mr. O’Conner, my name’s Nick Castalano. I’m an attorney.”
“Not O’Conner—Prado. You my lawyer?”
“No, I represent a man who’s trying to find out what happened to his brother during the Korean War. You were in Korea. Right?”
Jack put his head down taking a couple of short quick breaths. “I don’t need this shit right now, mister.” He cupped his face, rubbed his eyes. “That was a thousand years ago.”
“Well, Mr. Prado, only a few questions.”
“Not now. I don’t want to answer any fucking questions. Beat it!”
“Mr. Prado, promise I won’t take much of your time.”
“Look, I ain’t got nothin’.”
“I need to have you look at something—tell me what you think, that’s all. We can do it here or I can have you brought before a federal judge. Have it your way.”
For a few seconds it was quiet except for the sounds of a woman sobbing. Jack closed his eyes. “Get me out of here, and I’ll talk as long as you want.”
“I can’t, Mr. Prado. I may have to call you as a witness, and I can’t very well be your lawyer, too.” Nick omitted that there was always the possibility that Jack would be an adversarial witness, one that he might have to rake over the coals.
“All right, then if you want, let’s talk after I get out of here, but listen up, I ain’t going be no witness.”
“Tell you what, Mr. Prado, I’ll wait for you upstairs. When the arraignment’s over, we can talk?”
Jack looked at Nick. “You think I’ll get out today?”
“Can’t say. They’ll probably ask for bond. Have you been in trouble before?”
“Never. First time.”
Nick returned to the upper world and walked through the double door entrance to the arraignment court, the drainpipe for the
criminal justice system. He would wait to see if Nick walked out a free man. Now that he had finally found him, he did not want Jack slipping through his fingers. An hour passed before Jack, represented by a public defender, appeared and in just a few minutes more, the judge pronounced the only words that mattered, “You are free to go, sir, on your own recognizance. Don’t leave the state. Next case!”
Nick met Jack on the way out, and the two went to a small conference room where Nick occasionally met clients. Plaster walls lathered and troweled in the last century were gray and graffitied, but otherwise retained their smooth hardness. The place whiffed faintly of feces from the infrequent bum who used the room to nap, defecate and leave. In the center was an oak table carved with hundreds of initials and two folding chairs for defendants to discuss past faults and divine their future with an advocate licensed to contribute to their fate.
With a stubble beard, Jack reeked from a combination of halitosis, alcohol, urine and body odor. Nick walked over to a frosted window, forced it open and let in the siren sound of an ambulance stuck behind a fender bender, opting to talk over the racket rather than take the stench. Jack stood waiting, his arms wrapped around himself.
“Have a seat,” he said in a loud voice.
The men sat across from one another. “I noticed the prosecutor referred to you as O’Conner, yet you go by Prado, which is it?”
Jack exhaled, moving restlessly in his chair. “My mother’s maiden name is Prado, I prefer that, but my legal name is O’Conner. You can refer to me as Prado... Man, do you have a cig?”
“No, gave it up.”
“Is this gonna take long? I am dying for somethin’ to eat.” Jack rotated his head like he was trying to release a crick in his neck.
We Were Beautiful Once Page 19
