The moment that then passed between us was what we used to call on the street PFS - pretty fucking strange. Nobody was supposed to mean it. I wasn't supposed to squeeze her tits and Glyndora wasn't supposed to like it. We were playing chicken or the Dozens. It was as if we were both on camera. I could see it in my mind's eye - the bodies here and the spirits hovering fifteen feet above, wrestling like angels over someone's soul. In theory, we were merely disputing power and terrain. But with all these faces, the secret self was set free and was frisking about. Those rich brown eyes of hers remained dead set on mine, thoroughly amused, determinedly defiant: I see you. So what? I see you. But, folks, we were both pretty goddamned excited.
This contact, encounter, call it what you like, lasted only seconds. Glyndora pushed her arms up and slowly parted my hands. Her eyes never left mine. She spoke distinctly.
'You couldn't handle it, man,' she said and turned for the kitchen.
'Are we taking bets?'
She didn't answer. I heard her say instead that she needed a drink.
I was ringing - the body after 4,000 volts. It was the whole idea of it, me playing with her playing with me. Mr Stiffy downstairs was definitely awake too. I heard her banging around in a cabinet and swearing.
'What?' I asked. She had no whiskey, and I offered to go out to get her a pint. I wanted her to relax. This could be a long conversation, a longer evening. 'You make coffee.' I pointed at her but didn't linger as I leaned into the little kitchen; I was afraid to see what showed. Something in me was already clinging to the weird intimacy of that instant between us. With any invitation, I might have kissed her goodbye.
So I went charging out toward the Brown Wall's, a local chain I'd seen on the way in, a grown man running down the street in the dead of winter, with his flag half unfurled. The store was in the neutral zone, between the projects and the upscale, its bricks spray-painted with gang signs, its windows holding gay displays but guarded by fold-back grates. I grabbed a bottle of Seagram's off the shelf, feeling I'd seen something pornographic when I looked at all those glass soldiers arrayed side by side. As an afterthought, I detoured to pharmaceuticals for a three-pack of Trojans, just in case, I told myself, because a Scout is always prepared. Then I barreled back down the block oblivious to the three gangbangers who stood on the corner in their colors checking me out. I took all the front steps in one bound and hit the buzzer, waiting to be restored to paradise.
I rang intermittently for I'd say maybe a minute and a half before I began to wonder why she was not answering. My first thought? That I'm a big dumbbell? That I'd let the little head think for the big one? No, I actually worried about her. Had she fallen ill? Had one of the neighborhood muggers come through the window and done her while I was gone? Then I recalled the little fatal click behind me that I'd made nothing of as I flew down the staircase. Suddenly, as I stood on the stoop, shriveled by the cold, I realized that was the sound of the dead bolt being set, of a lady locking up for the night.
I will say this for myself - I did not go gently. I punched that buzzer like it was her fucking nose. After about five minutes, her voice came up clearly, just once, and not long enough to allow any reply.
'Go way,' she said, alive and well and not waiting for me.
Let me be honest: it was not a good moment. I had beaten Lyle to the car tonight, my shitbox Chevy; Nora got the good car, a jade-green Beemer which I always drove with a pleasure that made me feel as if I had taken a pill. I retired to this wornout wreck, where I was always ill at ease with the stains Lyle and his friends left on the seats, and tried to assess the situation. Okay, I told myself, some gal won't let you in, then puts the make on you, then locks the door. The point is ...? Fill in the blank. Pictures? Maybe some dope was in the closet with a camera.
I had to give her credit, though. Glyndora knew where the belly was on this porcupine. Let him strike out with the ladies once again, then put liquor in his hand. In my palm, the bottle had a strange magical heft. I always had drunk rye, same as my old man. God, I loved it. I felt a little thrill when my thumb passed across the tax labels on the bottle's neck. I was a civil drunk who did not get started until nightfall, but by two in the afternoon I could feel a certain dry pucker back in the salivary glands and the first shot was always enough to make me swoon. I used to think all the time about Dom Perignon, the monk who'd first distilled Champagne. He fell down a flight of stairs and announced to the brethren who rushed to his rescue, ‘I am drinking stars.'
It all seems so goddamned sad, I thought suddenly, looking out in the bleak night toward Glyndora's apartment. My breath was fogging the windows and I turned the engine over for heat. The whole appeal of this venture had been to take some sudden startling control over my existence. But I felt again some faraway master puppeteer whose strings were sewn into my sleeves. The fundamental facts were plain again: I was just a lowdown bum.
I wondered what I always do - how'd I end up this way? Was it just nature? In my neighborhood, if your old man was a copper or a fireman, you took it for granted he was a hero, these mystical men of courage donning their helmets and heavy coats to brave one of nature's most inscrutable events, how substance turns to heat and color, how the brilliant protean flames dance as they destroy. When I was three or four, I'd heard so much of this stuff, sliding down the pole and whatnot, that I was sure that when he wore his boots and fire slicker my old man could fly. He couldn't. I learned that over time. My father was no hero. He was a thief. "Teef,' as he used to pronounce the word, never in application to himself. But like Jason or Marco Polo, he brought back treasure from each adventure.
I often heard my father explain his logic when he engaged my mother in bouts of drunken self-defense. If a house is burning to the ground, woman, why not take the jewelry before it melts, for heaven's sake, you're there risking life and limb - you think you went outside and asked the residents, as they stood there with the flames shooting through their lives, that they'd say no? When I studied economics in college, I had no trouble understanding what they meant by a user's fee.
But I was not inclined to forgive him. I used to wonder as a kid if everybody knew the fireman stole. Everyone in my neighborhood seemed to understand - they'd come nosing around, looking to buy cheap the little items that were nicked and fit well in the rubber coats. 'Why'd you think they made them pockets in the coats so big?' my father used to say, never to me but to whoever had sidled by to examine the table silver, the clocks, the jewels, the tools, the thousand little things that entered our household. He'd laugh as he made these subverted displays. 'Where'd it come from?' the visitor would ask, and my father would chuckle and say that bit about the coat. Kind of dumb, of course, but he wanted people to think that he was bold all frightened people do, they want to be just like the people who scare them. I had a cousin, Marie Clare, who came by once and asked my father to keep an eye out for a christening dress for her baby and he got her a beauty -why'd you think they made them pockets in the coats so big?
For me, as a kid, the shame of it sometimes seemed to blister my heart. When I started confession, I confessed for him. 'My father steals.' The priests were never uninterested. 'Oh yes?' I wanted to leave my name and address in the hope they'd make him stop. A boy's father is his fate. But this kind of stealing was a matter of society, forgivable and common. They told me to respect my father and pray for his soul, and better mind my own conduct.
'So much of life is will.' I had spun the golden cap off the pint before I knew what I'd done, and repeated that old phrase to myself. I had heard it from Leotis Griswell, not long before he died. I looked into the open bottle as if it were a blind eye, and was reminded for whatever reason of looking down at something else, another seat of pleasure. The sharp perfume of the alcohol filled me with a pang, as acute and painful as the distant sighting of a lovely woman whose name I'll never know.
So much of life is will. Leotis was speaking to me about Toots, his old student. Leotis had the skill I'd noted in many of th
e best lawyers, ardent advocates who at the same time held their clients at a distance. When he talked about them he could often be cold-blooded and he did not want me to be beguiled by Toots. 'He'll make excuses to you about his harsh life, but I've never cared much for sociology. It's so negative. I don't need to know what holds down the masses. Any fellow with an eye in his head can see that: it's life. But where does that rare one come from, what is the difference? I still spend hours wondering.
Where the strength comes from not to surrender. The will. So much of life is will.' A certain subtle incandescence refracted through the old man as he said this, the feeble body still enfolding his large spirit, and the memory of it and the standard he set as a person punished me now.
Still, Leotis had it right, about life and will. It's an appropriate belief for a man born in the last years of the nineteenth century, yet it's out of phase for anybody else. Now we believe that a nation is entitled to self-determination but a soul is a slave to material fate: I steal because I'm poor; I feel up my daughter cause my ma did that to me; I drink because my ma was sometimes cruel and called me names and because my father left that trait, like some unhappy lodestar, in my genes. On the whole, I still prefer Leotis's outlook, the same one they taught me in church. I'd rather believe in will than fate. I drink or don't drink. I'll try to find Bert or I won't. I'll take the money and run or else return it. Better to find options than that bondage of cause and effect. It all goes back to Augustine. We choose the Good. Or the Evil. And pay the price.
And this, this may be the serpent's sweetest apple. I did not even seem to swallow.
I am drinking stars.
Thursday, January 26
B. Your Investigator Loses Something Besides His Self-respect
I have awakened so many mornings vowing never to do this again that there was almost pleasure in the pain. I felt like something fished out of the trash. I held absolutely still. The sunlight was going to be like a bullet to the brain. Along the internal line from head to gut there was a bilious feeling, some regurgitive impulse already stirring. 'Slow,' I told myself, and when I did I sensed for the first time that I wasn't alone.
When I opened my eyes, a kid was looking square at me, Latin he seemed to be, crouched about an arm's length away on the driver's side beneath the dash. He had one hand on the car's tape player, which he'd lifted half out, revealing the bleak innards of the auto, colored cables and dark spaces. Cutting the wires would be the next step. The door was cracked behind him and the dome light was on. There was a little sniffle of cold air riffling across my nose.
'Just cool,' he told me.
I didn't see a gun, a knife. A kid, too. Thirteen, fourteen. Still with pimples all over the side of his face. One of your sweet little urban vampires, out in the early-morning hours rolling drunks. Fifty coming, I could still pound this little fuck. Hurt him anyway. We both knew it. I checked his eyes again. It would have been such a frigging triumph if there was just a dash, a comma, an apostrophe of fear, some minute sign of hesitation.
'Get out,' I said. I hadn't moved. I was sort of folded up like a discarded shopping bag, piled sideways onto the passenger's seat. With the adrenaline I was waking fast and turning dizzy, whirly city. My tummy was on the move.
'Don't fuck around, men.' He turned the screwdriver to face me.
'I'll fuck with you, shorty-pants. I'll fuck with you plenty. And after I do, you won't be fuckin anybody.' I gave my head a sort of decisive nod. Which was a bad mistake. It was like tipping back in a chair too far. I rolled my eyes a bit. I picked myself up on my elbow. With that, it happened.
I puked all over him.
I mean everywhere. It was dripping from his eyelashes. His nappy head had got little bits of awful stuff all over. His clothes were soaked. He was drowning in it, spluttering and shaking, cursing me, an incoherent rap. 'Oh men,' he said. 'Oh men.' His hands danced around and I knew he was afraid to touch himself. And he was out of there fast. I was so busy waiting for him to kill me I actually didn't see him go until he was running down the street.
Well, Malloy, I thought, you are going to like this one. I patted my back all over a few times, before I straightened myself up, then realized that this story, like the tale of what really happened between Pigeyes and me, was going to go untold. After all, I had been bad. Weak. I'd had a drink. A bottle. I had fucked around with fate.
My guy at AA, my angel, guardian, hand in the dark, was a fella named Giandomenico, LNU, as we said on the Force, last name unknown, none used. Even though I haven't shown at a meeting in sixteen months, I knew he would talk to me and tell me that I still had what it took to do it. Today was no different than the day before yesterday. It was a day I wasn't gonna drink. I was going to get through today and work on tomorrow then. I knew the rap. I'd memorized all twelve steps. Somehow over the long haul I found A A sadder than being a drunk, listening to these folks, 'My name is Sheila and I'm an alcoholic' Then would come the story, how she stole and whored and beat her kids. Jesus, sometimes I wondered if people were making things up just so the rest of us wouldn't feel so bad about our own lives. It was a little too much of a cult for me, the Church of Self-denunciation, I used to call it, this business of saying I'm a shit and I turn myself over to a higher power, LNU, who'll keep me safe from John Barleycorn, the divil. I welcomed the support and got all warm and runny about a number of the people who showed up each week and held my hand, and I hope that they're still going and still safe. But I'm too goddamned eccentric, and reluctant to contemplate the mystery of why, with my sister's death, I no longer felt the uncontrollable need to drink. Had I finally filled even my own bottomless cup of pain? Or was this, as I often feared in my grimmest moments, some form of celebration?
Glyndora's little complex was across the street, gray on gray, the colors almost indecipherable in the subdued elements of winter, still looking like a stage set except for the sign in front, announcing that units were available, from 179 grand. What was her point last night? Was that whole thing, that interlude, just for laughs? I didn't think Glyndora enjoyed that kind of subtlety. She told you off face-to-face. But for some reason she had wanted me out of there. Was she afraid I would catch on to something? A boyfriend, maybe? Somebody's clothes were in the closet, shoes by the door. Archie's? Or Bert's?
I straightened myself up. I had a pretty good yuk thinking about Lyle getting in here with his buddies south of midnight and taking a whiff. I'd bet a lot of money he wouldn't know who to blame. He'd sit here trying to recall who'd hurled night before last. The little bastard had left worse for me. Still, I opened all the windows and threw the floor mat on the street. I shoved the radio back into the fragile plastic membrane of the dashboard. I thought about that little thief running all over the North End in the cold, searching for a hose. He'd smell like something when he got to school. Yep, I was feeling mean and humorous. I gathered myself together and slid across the seat behind the wheel, and only then noticed the absence against my hip. I began to swear.
The goddamn kid had got my wallet.
XI. EVERYTHING IS JAKE
A. Your Investigator Gets Interrupted
If Bert Kamin was dead, then who had the money?
This question struck me suddenly as I stood before a mirror at Dr Goodbody's, where I'd come to clean up before heading on to the office. A shower and shave had not done much for my condition. I still had the shadowy look of some creep on a wanted poster and my headache made me recollect those cavemen who used to open vents in their skulls. I phoned Lucinda to say where I was, asking her to make the calls to cancel and replace my credit cards. Then I found a lonesome corner in the locker room to figure things out. Who had the money? Martin had said that the banker he talked to in Pico had hinted that the account where the checks went was Bert's. But that was hardly authoritative.
A refuge, even a phony one, is where you find it, and I was irritated when the attendant told me I had a call. One of the things I hate worst about the world of business at the end
of the century is this instant-access crap: faxes and mobile phones and all those eager-beaver, happy delivery people from fucking Federal Excess. Competition in the big-bucks world has made privacy a thing of the past. I expected Martin, Mr Impatience, who likes to call you with his latest brilliant idea on a case from some airplane at eleven o'clock at night as he's bounding off to Bangladesh. But it wasn't him.
'Mack?' Jake Eiger spoke. 'I'd like to see you ASAP.'
'Sure. Let me get hold of Martin or Wash.'
'Better the two of us,' said Jake. 'Why don't you come up here? I want to give you heads-up on something. About our situation.' He cleared his throat in a vaguely meaningful way, so I suspected at once what was coming. The powers-that-be at TN had reviewed this fiasco - Bert and the money - and concluded there was a certain large law firm they could do without. Cancel the search party and pack your bags. I was going to get to give my partners the news as a 'leak'.
It had been some time since Jake and I had sat down man-to-man. They became uncomfortable meetings after my divorce from his cousin - and Jake's decision to stop directing TN cases to me. We never speak about either subject. The unmentionable, in fact, is more or less the bedrock of our relationship.
As usual, a long story. Jake was not an especially good student; I've always suspected he got into law school on his father's pull. He's bright enough - downright wily at times - but he has trouble putting thoughts on paper. A whiz at multiple choice but gridlock when he was writing essays. His own term was 'cryptophobic', but I think in today's lingo we'd say learning-disabled.