A man does stupid things for love, so I say: “I ain’t obstructing you. Not yet.”
Ronnie raises her eyebrows. “Are you serious? You wanna to get into it for a nutcase?”
My blood is up now so the voice of reason in my head is barely a mosquito whine.
“Yeah, I wanna get into it. And Sofia is not a nutcase.”
And, as if on cue, I hear her small voice behind me. Every word saturated with despair.
“Yes, Daniel. I am. I’m a freaking nutcase.”
Sofia came up behind me in bed socks so I didn’t hear a thing. Was a time a mouse couldn’t surprise me but now I’m getting old and my senses are as ragged as my emotions.
“No. No, darlin’. You say things you don’t mean. You remember things that didn’t happen, but it’s nothing we can’t fix.”
Looking at her standing there with every spark of the girl she used to be drained out of her by that monster Carmine I realize that I believe maybe 60 percent that she is innocent and the other 40 percent does not give a shit.
Whatever it takes. This woman will be happy.
“I’m here, Sofia,” I say, scooping her into my arms, and she seems smaller that she did minutes ago. There’s a radical weight-loss plan: Develop psychoses and homicidal tendencies and watch those pounds melt away.
“We’ll get through this,” I say. “I ain’t leaving.”
“That’s touching,” says Ronnie, in the room now, thumb hooked through the cuffs on her belt.
I shoot her a poisonous glare. “You enjoying this as much as you’d hoped, Detective?”
Ronelle scowls. “No, I ain’t, Daniel. I’m closing a cold case here, which oughta be a feather in my cap, and you’re making me feel like I shot this Carmine douche myself. Don’t you know that gloating is one of the perks in this job?”
I hold Sofia tighter. “Sorry to piss on your glory day, but this is a person we’re talking about.”
Sofia pats my chest. “Carmine is a person too. If I did something to him, something terrible, then I should answer for it.”
I don’t see any way that Sofia is not going to Police Plaza for questioning. I hold up a finger to Ronnie.
“Just gimme a second, okay?”
“I’ll give you ten, killjoy. Then I’m calling for assistance.”
Sofia pulls away from me. “You gotta let me go, Dan.”
I grip her shoulders, making full eye contact. “Okay, darlin’. They’re going to put you in a cruiser and take you downtown for questioning. What they’re really doing is fishing because they got nothing but a phone call made by a drunken, bipolar woman who doesn’t remember a thing about it. Don’t say a word until I get a lawyer down there and even then, your story is you don’t remember. Got it?”
“I don’t remember,” says Sofia, then gives herself away by attempting a brave smile.
My heart sinks. Sofia will say whatever I tell her until the interview room door clangs behind her, then she will say what the depression tells her. I feel my extremities tingle and a blackness eats at the edges of my vision, and for a second I understand Sofia’s despair.
“It’s okay, baby,” she says, reaching up to stroke my cheek. “It’s better this way.”
Ronnie taps her cuffs and I know my time is up. If I don’t release Sofia right now the restraints are coming out and the backup will rush the stairwell.
“Just hold on for me, darlin’,” I tell her, as close to tears as I’ve been for a while. “Hold on until I get there.”
“I will, Dan,” she says and I know it’s all over.
She would sign a contract with Satan now if it meant earning herself the punishment her disorder thinks she deserves.
Ronnie has Sofia by the wrists and is gently pulling her from me when I register a figure at the door, and my Celtic sixth sense of doom informs me that things are about to get worse.
How the hell could things get worse?
The guy in the doorway looks like he had the crap beaten out of him by monkeys. His hair is all up on one side, and styled into a perfect quiff on the other. He’s wearing a neon-blue suit with honest to god shoulder pads that are either retro or way ahead of the fashion curve, and his fleshy upper lip is adorned by a Prince moustache that ripples like a worm in time to his heavy breathing. Physically, he doesn’t appear to pose much of a threat unless he clamps himself onto my face and smothers me with his beer gut, but for some reason the sight of this greasy character extinguishes the last spark of hope that I was nurturing that this day might turn out okay.
“What the hell is going on here?” Is the first thing out of his mouth, plenty of attitude, like he’s king of whatever hill he happens to be sitting on, and not a short guy with bad hair and a worse suit. Then he sees Ronnie and the twinklings on her belt and everything changes. The guy stands himself up straight and drops his eyes to the floor. Instant and total submission.
Ex-con, I realize. And not all that ex.
I glance down at Sofia and her eyes are wide like she’s witnessed the second coming of Elvis and she’s taking those rapid little breaths that are music to any man’s ears.
Then I get it.
Christ no. This runt can’t be him. I believe in coincidence but this would be way beyond coincidence. This would be a goddamn miracle.
Detective Deacon takes the lead. “What are you doing here, sir? There’s an arrest in progress.”
The runt keeps his eyes down. “I live here, officer. This is my apartment.”
Ronelle laughs. “You gotta be kidding me, right? You’re Carmine Delano?”
“That’s me, officer,” he says, and with those three words Sofia is lost. All the work of the past year sloughs away as she steps out of my arms.
“Carmine,” she says, holding out her hands to this guy who abused her for years. “Carmine, baby.”
The guy flicks his eyes upward toward her and shakes his head.
Not yet, the motion says. Wait until the cop leaves.
The guy has been in prison all these years. Not dead, banged up.
Ronnie is having a hard time accepting such a mind-boggling a coincidence.
“You’re Carmine Delano?” she says again. “Showing up here at this precise moment. Unbelieveable.”
“All’s I did was come home, officer,” says the man who purports to be Sofia’s lost husband, come home at the very time his wife is about to be whisked downtown for his murder.
Ronnie knows prison discipline when she sees it. “Show me your arm, convict,” she orders and Carmine does not hesitate, dropping his duffel bag and rolling up one sleeve, revealing a forearm covered in ink.
“Prison tats,” says Ronnie. “Aryan Brotherhood. My favorite. When did you get out?”
“Two weeks,” says Carmine sullenly. “I did a twenty jolt without parole.”
“Where?”
“Eastham, Houston.”
Ronnie whistles. “The pig farm? They do not fuck around down there. You got any ID?”
Carmine pulls an envelope from his jacket pocket and hands it over.
“Just my release papers.”
“Tell me what landed you in the farm, Mr. Carmine Delano,” says Ronnie, studying the papers.
“Armed robbery, Officer. I was heading for Mexico and ran out of funds.”
“You kill someone, Carmine?”
Carmine shuffles like a guilty schoolboy outside the principal’s office. “A guy died in the bank. An old guy. Heart attack they tell me.”
Ronnie stuffs the papers into the envelope. “So, no parole. You were lucky not to end up with the needle and an audience.”
“Yes, ma’am,” says Carmine, but Ronnie is not impressed by his politeness.
“Ma’am? I don’t think the Brotherhood call people like me ma’am. Ain’t you noticed what color I am, son?”
“I was just trying to survive, Officer.”
Detective Deacon palms the papers into Carmine’s chest. Hard. “Yeah? Well, that supremacist bullshit don’t wash
up here. I got your face in my lexicon now, Delano, so you better hope that nobody perpetrates any hate crimes, ’cause if they do, I’m coming directly to this address. Got it?”
“Absolutely, Officer. Those days are behind me. And I’m gonna get these tattoos lasered.”
“Good. Daniel here knows a cosmetic surgeon. He ain’t the most reliable but he’s cheap.” She turns to Sofia. “And you! Stop wasting police time with your boozy confessions. Next time I’ll find something to charge you with.”
Ronnie might as well be in another dimension for all the attention Sofia pays to her. I know the feeling.
Deacon pulls the flap of her coat across the gun, badge and cuffs. “Looks like you’re out in the cold.”
I turn to Sofia, to see if this is true. I shouldn’t have, because I’m invisible to her now. She will not even acknowledge me.
“Carmine, sweetheart,” she says, and I swear she is glowing. “I knew you’d come back. I knew you loved me.”
“I dreamed of you every night, Sofia,” he says, and they are like dogs on leashes straining to get at each other. “Even when I was being punked, I was thinking of you.”
Punked?
That should break the spell, but no.
“Poor baby,” she says. “Did they hurt you?”
Ronnie punches me in the shoulder. “You need a ride, soldier? Or you gonna get back to the club on that third wheel you got spinning?”
I swipe my Deadwood DVD box from the coffee table as if it’s the last remaining shred of my pride. The disk is still in the machine, but it’s gonna have to stay there.
“Can I sit up front?” I ask, hoping my bottom lip is not wobbling.
I walk toward the door with boots of lead, waiting with each footfall for a word from Sofia.
A farewell, a thank-you.
Anything.
But not a single utterance is offered. She is ill, I know and chained to this man by geasa, but that doesn’t make my heart any less broken.
Just like that I am out of the picture.
As the door closes behind us, I hear the thump of Sofia’s feet racing across the wooden floor and into Carmine’s embrace.
My phone tweets and I check it.
Cannibalism is not the only way to eat people alive. Love is just as effective.
I almost look around to see if Simon Moriarty is watching me.
Chapter 13
THERE’S STILL A LOT OF ACTIVITY AT THE CLUB AND I BET Jason could use a hand with the snag list, but my heart is heavy and my fingers are too thick for delicate work, so I sneak in the back way, like a teenager who has broken curfew to drink cider, and climb the boxy stairs to my apartment.
Dance music hammers the floorboards but after years of living in the same building as Sofia Delano, I can sleep through any commotion that is not potentially lethal. I strip down to my shorts and lie on the bed, which can accommodate my entire body if I lie diagonally and don’t move around too much.
In the end, it is not the decorating clamor itself that keeps me awake but the associated shenanigans. Jason and his boys are whooping it up while they work and I can hear the xylophone tinkle of shot glasses being raised every couple of minutes. The humanity gets to me, and the sheer, boisterous happiness of those guys. I know that I would be more than welcome to trot downstairs and join the celebration but I’d rather just lie here and be jealous. Anyway, grim moods are infectious and I would probably kill that party stone dead in twenty minutes. It would be like Jason’s dad walking in wearing his Gays Are the Spawn of Satan T-shirt. A T-shirt that Jason’s dad actually owns. Jason came out by telling his father that if gays were the spawn of Satan, then that would make him the devil. Took the father a couple of days to figure it out.
So I lie here on the bed and indulge myself in a mopey funk, replaying the week’s events over and over, but always coming back to the glassy adoration in Sofia’s eyes when Carmine darkened her door. Shit, she would chug the Kool-Aid right out of the bottle for that guy.
I was fooling myself. I never meant anything to Sofia.
Nothing. Not a thing. She couldn’t even remember my name.
For long hours my thoughts go around and around in ever-decreasing self-esteem circles until eventually I cry fuck it and trudge into the bathroom, where I find a bottle of triazolam that is almost in date and dry-swallow three pills.
I lie down again and watch the sun climb behind my linen blind like a cheap special effect in a silhouette puppet show.
Surely I will sleep now. Surely.
Even Sofia can’t compete with three triazolam.
I sleep like a dead man and my dreams are vague— filled with dark shadows and glinting edges. The only splotch of color is the crimson circle of a rising sun, which turns into a pink thong, and any guilt I feel over the fates of Fortz and Krieger evaporates with the last wisps of the dream.
“Good riddance to those dicks,” I say to the ceiling, then roll out of bed for four score push-ups to prove to myself I ain’t over that hill just yet. It is also a positive sign, physically and psychologically, that I am sporting a wake-up boner that any decent caveman could start a fire with, which means the push-ups aren’t as deep as they would normally be.
There is life in the old dog yet, in spite of Sofia.
Yet even thinking her name deflates me more effectively than the memory of Fortz in an apron. I collapse in a heap of frustrated sweat and realize that I am not out of the emotional woods just yet.
Casino noise drifts up between the floorboards, which means that the crew is still renovating or I have slept right through the grand opening, which would be just dandy with me. Jason telling me to cheer the hell up is the last thing I need right now. But I gotta go down there, what kind of douche would I be if I didn’t?
I throw on the Banana Republic gray suit that I bought in their January sale especially for this occasion, but it doesn’t give me the boost that I’d hoped for.
Now you are a cuckolded moron in a suit.
I check my phone for time and messages. I have missed plenty of both. It’s eight thirty in the P.M. and I have a dozen missed calls and a psy-Tweet.
To all my Twits: Be happy. Seize the day. Live in the now. What do you people want from me?
Looks like Dr. Simon is tiring of his online practice. Maybe universal full-time access is not as much fun as he thought it would be.
I slip through the adjoining door from my apartment stairwell straight into a heaving throng of humanity. The club is seething with customers.
I am frankly amazed.
Jason has put in the effort with e-mail drops and so forth, but I never expected a turnout like this. There are guys crowded around the roulette wheel. A bunch of college boys are doing shots and tossing twenties at a blackjack dealer, and the booths are crowded with young bucks sharing pitchers.
Something about the crowd seems off but I brush it away, glad to have a reason to celebrate something. Anything.
This is a good start. We can build on this.
I spot Jason working the room. Shaking hands and clapping shoulders like he’s king of the hill.
He deserves it. If it wasn’t for Jason this place would just be another casualty of the recession.
I have to worm my way through the crowd to reach his side.
“Jason,” I call to him. “Hey, J.”
Jason is wearing a powder-blue suit with a brooch at the neck of his shimmering silk shirt. He’s had highlights put in, and replaced the diamond in his incisor with a ruby.
He looks good.
Jason sees me and I swear he seems nervous for a second.
“Dan. Where’ve you been? What do you think?”
I grab his shoulders like he’s my brother. “What do I think? This is amazing. Unbelievable. How the hell did you get all these people here?”
The big lug actually blushes. “Social media, partner. I worked the keyboard. Lotta guys looking for a place like this.”
I grab a glass full of green stu
ff from a passing tray and salute him. “To you, buddy. We might actually be able to pay the bills if we can hang on to some of these customers.”
Jason fake punches and I fake block, spilling half my drink. “Fuck bills, man,” he shouts to the ceiling. “Were gonna make bank.”
Looking around me tonight that’s not hard to believe so I decide to ignore the Irish Catholic voice of sanctimony and pessimism that prevents me from ever getting too contented and for once in my life enjoy the moment.
I sink what’s left in my glass. Tastes like lime jelly but there’s a kick to it.
“What the hell was that?” I ask when I finish coughing.
Jason blows a kiss toward the bar. “Marco is a genius with cocktails. He calls that one a One-Eyed Serpent. You want another?”
I gotta stop now, or commit to the hangover.
Shouldn’t I be taking charge here? Shouldn’t I be making sure everyone’s pulling their weight?
Then again, after the week I’ve had.
“What the hell,” I say. “Keep ’em coming.”
Tonight, for once, I embrace the Irish stereotype.
Some time later, I am slouched in my office drunk-mumbling to myself. Whenever I drink there are three distinct stages: optimism, reproach, singsong. I am bang in the middle of stage two at the moment, right on the guilt edge, berating myself that I am just like my father, and this sort of carry-on is what got my family killed before their time. One more drink and I’ll be on the table crucifying the Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York,” which is a song no one should be allowed to sing except Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl.
“I am not my father,” I tell myself, then: “You sure act like him. You sure look like him now. A drunken bum.”
And then, the saddest words a man can say aloud:
“Nobody loves me.”
I thump my heart as I say this to make it more pathetic.
“Sofia doesn’t even remember who I am. Oh yeah, she likes looking at my thing when I come out of the shower. What am I? An object?”
Zeb arrives, as he was bound to with free booze floating around, and elbows his way into the office, and for a moment the thump of club sound waves enters with him and slaps me with a giant hand.