Cold Water Burning

by John Straley

  We stepped off the elevator and found a laundry room at the far end of the hall. I could see down to the street where people were walking back into the bar. Some were looking down toward the dock where the police had apparently gone.

  “Jonathan, what are you doing?” I asked. He kept smiling at me with such intensity I had the urge to turn away from him for a mo­ment.

  “Cecil . . . I’ve had some amazing breakthroughs, okay? I know this seems extreme, but trust me, it comes naturally from my work. I’ve had some amazing breakthroughs. And it’s clear to me that none of this”—here he gestured around in a way that I was guessing took in the entire known universe—“. . . that none of this is me and all of it wants something. Okay? So . . . I’m just giving it away.”

  “That’s, well, that’s good to hear,” I offered. I looked out the window again and saw that the kid from the stairwell was walking slowly with a police officer by his side, the kid pointing away from our location with urgently over-acted gestures.

  “Jonathan, why were you giving the money away?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t mine, Cecil,” he answered.

  “Whose was it?” I looked back at him, and he had the palms of his hands turned up and he held his arms out in front of him as if he were about to deliver a sermon.

  But instead he said, “Okay . . . All right . . . Money is printed by the government. To hoard the money is to deny your own erotic life.”

  “I understand that,” I lied. “These bills had been in a safe at Kevin Sands’s trailer. You took the money from his trailer last night. Were these bills yours or were they Kevin’s?” I was trying not to let my voice sound as if I were lecturing a child but I was having a hard time. The elevator bell rang and the door began to slide open.

  I pushed Jonathan back against a doorway, out of sight of anyone who might be in the elevator. Jonathan did not seem dis­turbed in the least. He pushed me away easily.

  “That money wasn’t anybody’s, okay?” he said, and his eyes locked onto mine as if he were trying to meld our minds together. “All of that is a misconception. I’ve got stuff I have to do. I’ve got to give the rest of it away. I’ve got to put things back to where they belong, okay? I’ve got stuff I have to do, okay?”

  No one was on the elevator, so I stepped back into the hallway. I took a deep breath and was trying to formulate my question to see just how much Jonathan knew about last night’s shooting of Patricia Ewers, when he quickly stepped in front of me and squeezed through the closing doors of the elevator.

  “Don’t worry,” Jonathan called out to me behind the metal doors. “Don’t worry, okay, Cecil?” And his voice sank away through the floor.

  “Yeah . . . okay,” I said to the blank closed elevator doors.

  It took me fifteen minutes to walk over to the jail. They checked me in without much of a hassle, thinking I was here, as usual, to work on Kevin Sands’s legal defense. The duty officer looked at my filthy clothes and shook his head as if he knew the whole story of my pathetic career. I took a cup of hot coffee in a paper cup back to the windowless interview room. The tape recorder took up half the tabletop, and a television with a VCR loomed in a rollaway rack beside the two chairs. I sat sipping sour coffee and listening to the piped music in the hall. Kevin Sands was dressed in a green jail jumpsuit. Both his eyes were black raccoon bruises bridged across his swollen nose. He was wearing the slipper socks that are regula­tion back in the block. His fine blond hair was damp and combed back. He looked at me with a disdainful smirk, which was strangely mirrored in the smirk the woman jailer gave me as she turned to close the door. Her leather utility belt creaked loudly as she winked and whispered, “I’ll just leave you two alone then,” and she closed the door.

  “Where is Jonathan?” Kevin blurted out as the door double-clicked shut.

  “Hey, good to see you, Kevin,” I said. “How’s your face?”

  Kevin took a can of tobacco out of his jumpsuit, rapped the lid, twisted it off and placed a pinch of tobacco in his front lip. “I want my fucking money, Younger,” he said flatly. He put the can back in his front pocket. “And my face hurts like hell,” he added, just to squelch any more polite conversation.

  “Where’d you get that money, Kev?” I folded my arms and leaned back in my chair.

  “It was given to me. You tell that crazy motherfucker I want it back. I’ll give you and that old bastard two days to get my money to me.”

  “Which old bastard are you referring to?”

  “Don’t be cute, Younger. You’re not Columbo, you know. Just find that nutbag and get my money back.”

  “Well, on that matter, Kevin . . . I think he’s spent . . . well, I should say he’s gone through quite a bit of the money.”

  “Younger,” he sighed, as if I were a naughty child, “clean out your ears. Just go hop around town and get it. Christ, it’s not like you’ve got a lot of important things to do, is it? Bring it back.” Kevin leaned forward and I could smell the minty tobacco on his breath. His bulging lower lip showed red, matching the scar on his nose.

  “How much money are we talking about, Kevin? I mean, how do I know when to stop gathering up all this money of yours?” I unfolded my arms and leaned forward until my nose was almost touching his. Kevin backed up quickly. I don’t suppose he enjoyed my invading his personal space, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t want me to bump his broken nose either.

  Kevin took the coffee cup out of my hand and spat into it. He set the cup on the table between us. He crossed his arms and stared at me in silence.

  “Come on, Kevin. How much of this money am I looking for?” I threw one of the hundred-dollar bills from my pocket at him.

  Kevin wouldn’t answer. I flicked the other hundred at him.

  “That’s it then, Kev. There’s your hundred bucks. I got you your money back. Now tell me where it came from.”

  “There’s more money, dickhead.” He picked up my coffee cup and spat in it again.

  “Tell me, Kevin. Patricia wasn’t carrying a gun. She hated the things. So, how did she come to have a gun in her hand when the cops broke into your house?”

  Kevin leaned back in the chair and tried to make his eyes go dead. “She was freaking out, man, screaming all sorts of shit. I brought the pistol out of the back and she calmed down a little. Then when the cops came and told her to step outside she flipped out again. She accused them of killing her husband. They told her they were going to put her under arrest and she really went nuts. She grabbed the gun and that’s all I saw. I was pulling Sean toward the back of the trailer by that time.”

  He stared at me as if he expected me to speak. He cleared his throat nervously, then went on. “That’s all I know about that, Younger. Now I want you to do something useful and get my money back. That’s all that should concern you now. I know you and that old cop are tight. I’ve always known.”

  “Really?” I grabbed the cup back, then took a handful of Kevin’s hair. I put my mouth down by his right ear and whispered, “Now you tell me,” I said through my teeth. “Where is Richard Ewers? I really don’t like acting like this, Kevin, but I think you’ve done something to Richard. I think you’re responsible for what happened to Patricia. I know you didn’t care for Patricia and Richard. You may have good reason. But they were friends of mine. Now please don’t scold me any further and just tell me what you did with Richard.”

  I took two fingers and lifted his nostrils toward his scalp so I could feel the crunching of the broken cartilage in his nose.

  Both Kevin’s fists were clenched. His legs were straight out in front of him and he was breathing hard through his mouth. He did not move to hit me, but he wasn’t starting a sentence either.

  I let him go and he relaxed so quickly it was as if he had de­flated. His face was pale like he was going to faint. I handed him the cup he had been spitting in.

  “Coffee?
” I asked.

  Kevin looked at me with the loathing and pity you’d show for a Labrador puppy who had rolled in shit.

  “Cecil, I don’t know where Ewers is and the truth of it is, I don’t know exactly how much money there was. I was counting it when all hell broke loose. I was counting it. Chevalier was there. He was nervous about the money. I figured he wanted it for himself. When things got wild he scooped it up and dove out the window.”

  “Where’d it come from then?” I set the coffee cup in the wastebasket and pushed the basket in front of Kevin, who was now sitting slumped over with his elbows on his knees.

  “I can’t tell you, Cecil. If I tell you that, I’m just as fucked as if I don’t have the money. Just get as much of it as you can. There was somewhere around forty grand. As far as where it came from, you should be talking to George.”

  “Doggy? You want me to give the money to the cops?”

  “If that old bastard wants a cut, that’s fine with me. You can get it to him, all right? But Jonathan’s gone nuts. He says he wants no part of the money . . .” Kevin rolled his eyes. “Yeah, he says he doesn’t want anything to do with the money and then he fucking takes it from me. There’s no fucking telling what he’s go­ing to do now. If I were you I’d get that money all squared away or . . .”

  Kevin’s eyes were beseeching me. Deep in those red-rimmed eyes, I almost saw a flicker of the humanity the doctors said couldn’t be there.

  “Or what, Kevin?” I reached out and touched him on the knee as the door rattled open and banged against the TV cart.

  “Cecil, you scamp!” Pomfret stuck his party-balloon-sized head in the room. “You better get out of here now. This is supposed to be a legal visit, and I’ve just been informed that you do not work for Kevin’s legal representative. So you better shove off.” Pomfret grabbed me by the elbow, and before I could say a thing to Kevin, I was propelled out of the room and down the narrow hallway to the front desk.

  “Get a letter of introduction from an attorney and you can come back,” the cop said, as I was launched into the first door­way past the bulletproof reception window. Just past the corner near the detective’s desk, I saw George Doggy sipping coffee out of a ceramic mug with the Alaska state flag on it. He waved, then held his fist to his ear mimicking a telephone, mouthing the words “Call me later,” just as I felt the skillet-sized hand of Officer Pomfret between my shoulder blades and heard the solid click of the rein­forced door swinging shut.

  I was out on the street again. Wind blew a sheet of newspaper down the street toward the elementary school and a paper cup chattered down the pavement as if it were frantic to be somewhere. Up on the mountain above town, the snow was still lifting off the ridges in an icy spume and a raven was stalled in midair with wings spread in flight. I had nothing more to do than try to gather up thousands of dollars of what was surely stolen tabloid money.

  As I walked away from the jail, I saw Patricia Ewers’s parents walking toward the courthouse. They must have flown up from Seattle on the early morning flight. I’m sure they were headed to the magistrate’s office to process their daughter’s death certificate. I changed direction in the middle of the street. I had met Patricia’s parents during their son-in-law’s trial. The old man had been a logger on the Washington coast. He walked with a stoop to his back and a limp, but his body was rock hard under his western dress shirt. His wife wore a print housedress and held a tissue to her mouth. I walked toward her with my hand extended and the old man stepped in front of his wife. He was frowning. He looked at me for a moment as if to take my measure. Then he opened the door to the courthouse, ushered his wife inside and shut the door firmly in my face.

  A prisoner on the street was washing a police car behind me. He was wearing a red jumpsuit and slip-on rubber boots. The raven I had seen stalled in the air was now sitting on the dome lights of the car. The prisoner reached into his pocket and threw the bird a soda cracker. As I crossed back to the other side of the street, the raven landed on a light standard overlooking the elementary school. The black bird held the square of white cracker as if it were a folded thousand-dollar bill. Then without reason, he dropped it. I turned and walked down the street toward Jonathan’s studio.

  Jonathan Chevalier rented a storage loft in an old warehouse above the water. With the tolerant indifference of his landlords, he had turned the loft into a studio apartment. The warehouse was built out on an old wooden pier that stood on pilings encrusted with barnacles and sea anemones blossoming white into the shaded water at high tide. At low tide, the anemones hung limp on the pil­ings near the spidery red forms of sea stars and the occasional abalone. As I stepped onto the pier, I heard a heron yawping under the dock, and I watched it lumber into flight, pumping its body along the surface of the channel near the float-plane dock.

  I watched the stairs to Jonathan’s apartment, thinking there might be police interest in Jonathan’s place, but after twenty min­utes I’d seen no one come or go so I walked up the outside stair­case and swung open the thin plywood-framed door, which was standing ajar.

  I flipped on a light switch just inside the door. A folding chair was turned on its side in the middle of the plank floor. A collection of overstuffed and broken office furniture was pushed against the walls. One bare bulb hung in the center of the room. The windows were draped with black plastic that was sealed around the edges with silver duct tape. A mattress was slumped against the wall near the bathroom. An aluminum hot pot was plugged in and cooking the air. The pot was so hot I could smell the paint burning off its outer surface. An old record player was set up in the shadows of a corner, and the needle skipped relentlessly on the record still cir­cling there.

  Stumbling around in the gloom, I was able to unplug the hot pot and then looked around for another light. On the back wall I saw dozens of lamps, all set up so their hollow-mouthed shades pointed toward the opposite wall. I found a power strip with exten­sion cords snaked to it and when I flipped the switch, all the lamps spat light at once.

  The back wall held a massive canvas smeared with paint. This surface was perhaps fifteen feet tall and twenty feet wide. Some of the paint had been applied with a roller; some looked as if it had been thrown directly on the smoothed canvas surface. One bright crimson swath looked as if it had been swabbed on with an old-fashioned floor mop.

  This paint was a mess, but not necessarily chaotic: reds and blues arching up higher than my head and sweeping down broader than my arms could reach. Some of the painted forms could have been running horses or waterfalls, but there was no real clue to the logic other than the paint itself.

  Back in the shadows, a cat jumped down from the overturned desk. A saucer of sour milk splashed on the plank floor. Then the cat curled up on a stack of slide projectors. This was Jonathan’s cat, Jackson.

  I lifted the cat easily off the top projector. As soon as I curled Jackson into my arms, he started to purr. I switched on the pro­jector and saw more of Jonathan’s artwork.

  There on the wall was a black-and-white photograph of Jona­than’s brother Albert. The projector’s fan whirred and I had to adjust the focus on the image. Albert looked to be about ten years old. He’d been dead at fourteen. The photograph showed Albert squinting up into the sun, standing on the deck of a fishing boat, his hands blurred and coming up to his face, perhaps to shade his eyes. The camera caught him smiling and unaware, a young boy with memories ahead of him. Jonathan had not been coloring in the image but was painting on top of the projected image. The image gave the impression that the ghost boy trapped in the pro­jected beam was being consumed in light and color. The image was a jumble of hot and cold colors, as if the boy might burn or drown. Grass-green swirls looped around his face. Ice-blue arrows pushed down toward his eye sockets. Above him, orange and red feathered to the top of the frame. I turned on the next projector and the wall filled in with a color photograph of a sailboat, the Naked Horse, float
ing on a tranquil sea. The image of the boat floated through the squalls of red and orange, suggesting the Naked Horse rolling through an eruption.

  Jackson purred in my arms. He felt warm and comforting, for now the wall looked frighteningly cluttered and disordered. Too much paint and too many ideas. This was the muddy adventure of an artist chasing genius without much success, and it made a sad artifact. The colors, as they had flowed to the bottom of the wall and across the floor, combined to make a murky diarrhetic brown. I put Jackson down and he curled against my leg, still purring.

  There was a clatter in the back, and a wedge of light stroked through the room as the door opened. George Doggy came in and slapped his ball cap against his leg.

  “Criminy Jane . . . Look at this mess,” Doggy exclaimed, then turned and looked at the jumble of images on the back wall.

  “Oh my Lord! Don’t tell me this is supposed to be a piece of art.” Doggy kept slapping his leg with his hat and squinting at the images.

  “I’ll tell you one thing, boy,” the old man mused, “this guy’s not much of a painter. I wouldn’t have him paint my shed even.”

  He put his hat on his head and looked at me squarely. “So, you find any of that money?”

  I stepped over to the old record player and put the needle on the third cut. The music of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers squeezed through the tiny speaker behind the old portable’s tweed fabric.

  “It was the money Kevin wanted to talk to you about, wasn’t it?”

  “Just whose money is that, George?” I asked, then turned the volume down so I wouldn’t miss a syllable of his answer.

  “He say anything about where it came from?”

  “Kevin told me to ask you about the money, George.”