Screwed: A Novel

  “It’s not like that anymore, darlin’. We’re upmarket now. Cloisters is a fashionable satellite town. Property prices have barely dipped here at all.”

  This argument is too boring to survive in a room with Sofia Delano.

  “Oh my God, lighten up, Danny. Let’s watch a couple episodes of that cowboy crap you like and have a beer.”

  “It’s Deadwood. And you shouldn’t drink too much on lithium. It affects your levels.”

  Sofia is already halfway to the fridge. “Beer ain’t drinking, Dan. I thought you were Irish.”

  Beer and Deadwood, with Sofia snuggled into my chest. That sounds pretty idyllic, or as Zeb would say, sweeter than a honey-coated hooker, which may be offensive but makes a lot more sense than most of his chestnuts. I could sure do with an early night, with the grand reopening of Slotz coming up tomorrow.

  “All right, darlin’. One beer.”

  “Maybe two,” she calls from the kitchen. “And turn off your phone. I don’t want your doctor boyfriend calling up.”

  I put the phone on silent, telling myself to savor this interlude of sanity.

  Sofia delivers my beer, clinks me with her own, then veers toward the bedroom.

  “I’m gonna blast the worst of the wet out of my hair. Why don’t you get working on that bottle and I’ll come back with another?”

  I sink into the sofa and I’m hunting between cushions for the remote control when the hair dryer whooshes into life.

  I’m searching for a remote on a sofa. That’s pretty normal. Sofia is drying her hair like a real person. Girlfriend material.

  One night. Let me have one night.

  I take a long pull on the beer, feeling its coldness spread calm down my chest and I must nod off for a minute because the next thing that happens is Sofia’s hair tickles my nose as she lays her head on my chest.

  “This is nice,” I say.

  “Yeah,” she answers. “I wish it could be like this all the time.”

  It’s like she plucks the wishes from the air over my head.

  I can feel her heart beating through my shirt, like a bird’s wings against the cage bars. Sofia is nervous.

  “Something bothering you?”

  “I should tell you about Carmine,” she says, and there is a tremor in her voice.

  Generally I would be thrilled to finally engage in that conversation, but right now I am tired and selfish and all I want to do is appreciate this beautiful woman and keep her pressed against my chest for as long as possible.

  “There’s no need,” I say. “Not right now.”

  “I gotta tell you, Dan. If we’re ever going to . . .”

  Move on? Have a chance? One of those probably.

  “Okay, but don’t upset yourself. Just the bullet points.”

  Sofia latches herself to my chest like a limpet. “I was all alone, that’s what it was. A silly teenager still listening to her Blondie records and wearing cheap makeup. My parents died and I was all alone in this house.”

  I knew Sofia owned the building. She lives on the income from the four apartments. She would live a lot better if she had some guy doing a bit of janitoring instead of letting the residents DIY in lieu of rent.

  “When I met Carmine, he seemed so exciting. He had a Mustang, you know, and he was like the opposite of my dad. We were engaged in six months. Married in a year. He was my first.”

  I could cry, this story is so mundane. Seems like somebody like Sofia Delano would have a more dramatic downfall, not this everyday tale of woe.

  “I don’t know what went wrong. Maybe the sex, you know, I was pretty new to it. I did whatever Carmine wanted but he was never happy. Started drinking earlier in the day. He would take all the rent money and go out drinking for days.”

  I pat her shoulder. It’s a pretty pathetic gesture, but I’m a bit out of my depth.

  “Carmine never let me out of the house and he wouldn’t let anyone in. One day he kicked the postman down the street for saying hi. Poor guy said hi, that was it.”

  I know all about that sort of insane, controlling jealousy. In my mind’s eye Carmine is starting to look a little like my dear old dad.

  That’s why you love Sofia, dope. You’re protecting your own mother.

  This is hardly a revelation. Anyone who saw a couple episodes of In Therapy would pick up on that. Simon Moriarty threw that psycho-dart at me months ago. Still, I am struck by how true it is.

  Maybe that’s why you are reluctant to get under the duvet.

  That’s the downside of having a shrink: afterward everything is distilled to burying Pops in the yard and copulating with Mom. Here’s a little hint for you: you ever get sent to therapy, just admit to the Oedipus thing at the end of session two, and you’ll shave six months off your sentence.

  “He went away for longer and longer. Came back with tattoos and stinking of other women. Often when Carmine would call to make sure I was home and tell me to fix dinner and then show up three weeks later, if his food wasn’t ready, he would hit the roof. It was terrible, Dan, awful. I was a wreck.”

  You’re still a wreck, I think, but there’s no kind way to put this so I keep it to myself.

  “Then one Christmas we had a big bust-up over the turkey. Too dry or not dry enough, I can’t remember. He hit me with a spatula, Dan, a goddamn spatula. So I grabbed the meat thermometer and told him he was a dead man if he touched me again. I meant it, God help me, that man brought out the killer in me, but I still loved him.”

  I know all about the killer inside. My mother never got the chance to kill my father. Perhaps I would have done it for her.

  “So he left. Just went. For months he would call and tell me to get his food on the table. He never came back but for years he called. The bastard. Every time the phone rings I jump, and I always keep a plate of salad in the fridge, you know, in case.”

  Bastard. Yep, that’s one word for him.

  “I burnt all the photos, Dan. Every one I could find, but I still see his face every damn place, every minute of every day.”

  Sofia cries for a while and I feel like joining her, might be cathartic, but I think maybe Sofia needs a rock to lean on right now, so I pat her shoulder and keep a stiff upper lip.

  “Total bastard,” I say sympathetically. “Asshole.”

  But a tiny craven part of me wonders what kind of salad and I hate myself for it and pray my stomach doesn’t rumble now. Could be awkward.

  Sofia cries for must be an hour, her small frame jerking against mine like a wounded animal and I know we have reached a turning point.

  “I’m going to stay on the medication,” she says finally, the words hitching out of her. “I want a life, Dan. I want us to go out, to dinner or something. Maybe a movie.”

  I’d like to stroke her hair but my arm is dead from the weight of Sofia’s head. “Baby, I would like that. Sincerely. I would love that.”

  And I would. Sincerely. A movie theater with those double seats, how great would that be? Jason tells me they tilt backward. I’ve never seen an Imax movie because experiencing awe alone seems indulgent, now there’s a whole world of shared experiences that could open up to us.

  Sofia sits up and sniffles. “Oh my God. I must look like a panda. I’m gonna clean up a little, okay? And get you another beer. A cold one.”

  “Okay,” I say, but I would have preferred to stay like this all night, dead arm or not.

  I watch Sofia pad into the bedroom and it occurs to me that she is more miserable sane than insane.

  I can change that. Just give me a month. Just let me have tonight for heaven’s sake.

  I have just cued up an episode of Deadwood, the one where Al passes the kidney stone, when someone knocks at the door. Three sharp regulation police raps.

  Balls.

  Ronelle Deacon is outside all cocked hip and coptitude, which is not a word but should be.

  “Old guy buzzed me up,” she explains because Hong must have made an impression. “The balls guy, you
know him?”

  “Yep. Mr. Hong. He’s been cutting off the circulation for years.”

  I must be squarely in the frame for something for Ronelle to track me down, and I’m hoping the preamble will give me a clue.

  She throws me with: “Remember when we went at it downstairs? That was some freaky stuff.”

  I glance nervously over my shoulder. Sofia does not need to hear this. Maybe I should do a cowboy accent so she’ll think the voices are coming from Deadwood.

  Yeah, that’s exactly what you should do. Let your psychotic girlfriend think the TV is talking about her.

  So instead I step into the hallway.

  “Ronnie, what’s the deal? Did you get something on Edit? You didn’t come looking for me to reminisce. Shit, you barely spoke to me on the freaky night in question when I saved your life a couple of times.”

  I figure it’s worth tossing the life-saving factoid into the mix. You never know, Detective Deacon might have a tender spot that I haven’t found yet.

  Ronnie is leaning against the wall, navy raincoat hanging like a cape. She’s so casual that I’m getting seriously worried.

  “Yeah, I remember that night, Danny. You put in the effort, I gotta hand it to you. All the GQ foreplay and shit, but next morning your girlfriend clocked me with a frying pan.”

  “It was a lasagna dish,” I correct her. “That’s Wile E. Coyote you’re thinking of who got hit with a frying pan.”

  Ronnie smiles and her teeth are like predatory Tic Tacs in the gloom. “You’re missing the point, Dan. Bitch decked me, so payback was always coming down the pipe.”

  She’s here for Sofia.

  I hate to trot out clichés but I have a bad feeling about this. Ronelle wouldn’t come down here personally unless there was some kind of prestige collar involved and as far as I know Sofia has only left the apartment a dozen times in the past decade, so what the hell could she have done? Did Zeb involve her in something when they were out together on his rounds?

  “What’s this about, Ronnie? If it’s some penny-ante bullshit, you owe me a pass.”

  Ronnie straightens, hooking a thumb behind her hip holster, pushing out the gun.

  “Murder one ain’t no penny-ante bullshit, McEvoy. You think I’m working late for parking tickets?”

  Murder one? My first thought is that Evelyn has had some kind of delayed reaction to the hammer blow. It’s possible.

  “Murder? What are you talking about? Who is Sofia supposed to have killed?”

  “You, Dan,” says Ronelle, grinning. “Well, you know, not you you. Carmine you.”

  Lotta you’s in that answer so it takes me a second to unravel them.

  “You’re saying that Sofia killed her husband?”

  “The real one, lucky for Danny boy McEvoy.”

  I am stunned. Partly at the revelation but mainly because I don’t doubt it enough.

  A part of me always knew.

  “Carmine is dead? Where did you find him?”

  Ronnie blinks twice then sniffs like she’s gonna spit and I know there’s a hole in her case.

  “We ain’t got the body per sé.”

  “No body, no case. What kind of bullshit is this? Is the crime rate so low you got time to be fucking around with hearsay?”

  I wouldn’t normally fire Class-A swearwords at the blues but Ronnie needs to know how against this I am.

  “Hey, Dan. Mind your language. Just because I can kick your ass doesn’t mean I ain’t a fucking lady. Comprendé?”

  I am unrepentant. “Well whaddya expect? Tooling in here on my night off and tossing out murder accusations without a body. I thought we were coming up on friendship, Ronnie.”

  The back of my mind registers that I’ve got maybe half a minute to finish up here.

  “This is business, Dan. I’m police first and foremost and I don’t let capitals walk.”

  I point a finger at Ronnie but stop short of poking. “This is harassment, is what it is. Why are you even opening a book on this, after twenty years? Because you got whacked with a saucepan?”

  “Lasagna dish.”

  Being corrected is irritating, I see that now.

  “You know what? You’ve got no paper to come in here plus you are off my Christmas list. So why don’t you clock the hell off or go pistol-whip some real criminals?”

  Ronnie’s smile never dims and I realize she must have something. The idea makes me sick to my stomach.

  Sofia could never survive in prison. Hell, she wouldn’t survive a trial.

  “I need to know what you have.”

  Ronelle walks forward and I either gotta step back or stand my ground.

  Screw it. I stay where I am and order my spine to straighten up. This woman once threatened to shoot me in the privates and the aftershock of that keen moment still passes through me whenever she violates my space.

  “Tell me, Ronnie.”

  “I don’t need to tell you shit, civilian.”

  “You can’t walk in here.”

  “You ain’t the resident, darlin’. Step aside.”

  “You need a reasonable suspicion at least, or else your case collapses in front of the judge.”

  Ronnie’s ebony face lights up and I know I’ve played into her hands.

  “Reasonable suspicion? I think you could say I have one of those.” She pulls out her iPhone and opens a sound file App.

  “This is a 911 call. Came in last night, all the lines were busy so it went to overflow. We record them all. SOP. You know what that means, don’t you soldier boy?”

  I have an urge to grab the phone and stomp it to smithereens. But those phones are tough little bastards so the likely outcome is that I would embarrass myself and probably break a foot to boot.

  Foot to boot. I am hilarious.

  I know that I am going to hear this message but I do not want to. Contrary to what Morpheus assured us with his red pill/blue pill speech, hearing the truth does not set a person free, and telling the truth usually earns the truth sayer an overnight bench in the tombs waiting for his arraignment with some public-defender kid still hungover from an evening spent sucking jello shots from a stripper’s navel. And if that image is suspiciously specific it’s only because Zeb has used me a couple of times as his one phone call.

  Ronnie taps the screen with a blood-red nail and the file begins to play. The voice is low and slurred but still fills the corridor and drifts into the room behind me.

  “Amazing speakers on these little things, right?” says Detective Deacon. “When I was a kid you’d have to lug around a goddamn boom box for this kind of sound.”

  I don’t join in the speaker-quality discussion. Instead I listen to what my darling Sofia said to the cops when she dialed 911 in the grip of bleak depression.

  “Someone needs to come take me in,” says Sofia’s voice, then pauses and I can hear the whiskey clunk in the neck of a bottle as she swigs it down. “I attacked a lady with a hammer. Can you believe that? I was a pageant queen. Now I’m getting hammered and hammering people.” A laughing jag then and more whiskey. “It’s not safe being me anymore. I need to be locked away. You don’t believe me? What about this? I killed my asshole husband. Oh yeah, I killed Carmine with his own pistol. Kept shooting till there was nothing left in the gun. I loved that man and he treated me worse than a dog. I shot my husband and I should go to prison. Can’t be any worse than where I am now.”

  Ronnie whistles. This is incriminating stuff and it’s not over yet.

  “No?” continues Sofia. “Forget prison. You guys come down here, you better be ready to shoot me. I’ve got weapons. And anthrax, I have a bag of that. So shoot first and ask questions later. I am a danger to the public and I need to be dead. You guys listening? I’ll be a-waiting.”

  And that is the end.

  Anthrax? Bollocks.

  I decide to be brazen. “Who’s that supposed to be?”

  All Ronelle Deacon can do is laugh and I don’t blame her. “Yeah. Whatever, Dan.
Just be on your way. I’ve got business here.”

  “It isn’t Sofia, if that’s what you think.”

  Ronelle shakes out her arms, which is a well-known precursor to police brutality.

  “I knew who it was right away, Dan. So I checked into Carmine Delano. A nasty piece of work, small-time pusher and wannabe pimp. Turns out he beat the crap out of your lady friend for years before taking off. They found his car over in Wildwood by the pier. A little blood but nothing too suspicious. Everyone thought Carmine had run off with one of his various lady friends. Now, it’s looking like your sweet Sofia filled him full of lead, washed down the car and dumped him in the ocean. Now I gotta take her in, and run DNA on all the bloaters from around that time. I am presuming the anthrax comment was bullshit.”

  My head is spinning. What the hell happened to Deadwood? That was only two minutes ago?

  I want to protect Sofia but I don’t know what to do. This problem cannot be coaxed out of existence with fists or snappy one-liners.

  Unless we go on the run. I could truss up Ronnie and make a break for Canada.

  Deacon reads the thought in my eyes.

  “Oh no you ain’t thinking about running,” she says, incredulous. “You think I came here alone after the anthrax thing? There are a couple of guys checking their safeties outside. The only reason Homeland ain’t up in here is because I assured them that your woman is crazy.”

  “Sofia is not crazy!” I mutter. “She has issues and we’re working through them.”

  “Issues? Are you listening to yourself, Dan? You sound like a goddamn commercial for Valium or some shit. You gonna read me the side effects now? No, let me tell you. The side effects of dating Sofia Delano may include having to pretend you see shit that ain’t there, watching her assault police officers and finding out that loony tune Mrs. Delano busted half a dozen caps in her shitbag husband’s ass.” Ronelle claps her hands, delighted with her little speech.

  “You got a mean side,” I tell her like a spurned lover. “I knew you were tough, Ronnie, and straight as an arrow. But you’re wringing every drop of humiliation outta this arrest. Were you actually hoping I’d be here?”

  She has the grace to blush a little. “Just get out of my way, Dan. I only got one set of cuffs on me or I’d book you for obstruction.”