Blackout, page 10
Upside down. My lord.
Lewis Dice approached the truck. ‘Was anyone hurt?’ he asked.
The two men from the recovery service were taciturn. They regarded Dice, with his high-pitched voice and baggy shorts and funny sandals, as if he were some crazy old coot who’d wandered away from an old folks’ home without written authority.
‘Don’t rightly know,’ one of them said. ‘We just pick ’em up and drag ’em off, dude.’
‘It’s in bad shape,’ Dice said. He looked at the car, the passenger door of which was unhinged and buckled. ‘I’ve seen plenty of accident victims in my time. I spent a few years in ER. I’m a physician, you know. Was. Retired.’
‘Zatso,’ said the younger of the two men, a boy in his late teens. He had brown teeth. Dice, senses honed by a lifetime of abstention from drink and cigarettes, could smell tobacco on him.
‘When did this happen?’
‘Dunno. We just haul ’em away,’ the kid said. He wore big leather mitts. ‘Zatsall we do.’
Dice lingered a few moments and, since the likelihood of further conversation was clearly nil, walked off through the grass. He thought of all the casualty cases he’d attended: the gunfire victims, people with third-degree burns, folks hauled from car wrecks.
Pitiful situations.
Ah – what was this?
The dead swallow was delicately balanced on a pyre-like arrangement of grass. Dice went down on his knees and picked the creature up very carefully and placed it inside one of his plastic bags. The bird was riddled with pellets. Those boys with goddam airguns – why didn’t somebody drum into their fat heads that people and creatures shared this planet, that respect was due every living thing?
He sealed the bag, rose and continued to walk. He scanned thickets, looking for casualties. Some days he found none, others he picked up two or three. A few he could repair and stuff, most he rejected as beyond restoration. Now and again, driven by the curiosity that had propelled him all his life, he performed very delicate post-mortems on his kitchen table.
He came upon an umbrella on the ground, one of those plastic transparent jobs people picked up cheaply when they were caught in an unexpected rainstorm. He gazed at it a moment, then walked on. Utterly disgraceful what he came across out here at times. Junkies’ needles, shriveled condoms, used tampons, sometimes discarded underwear, shoes, a pair of jeans once. The place was a dumping ground.
He kept going. Grass grew in places as high as his thighs. The air was richly scented with wild flowers. A barbed growth snagged his shorts and retarded his progress a moment. He freed himself carefully and continued, and the stalks of long grass parted reluctantly as he moved. What one really needed here was a machete. Chop chop, slash slash, clear a path. Slice and hack, hack and slice. He hummed a remembered snippet from The Pirates of Penzance. Many years ago he’d played the role of the Pirate King in an amateur production staged by the staff of St Dominic’s General Hospital, and he’d been good, very good.
He stopped suddenly in front of a thick stand of unruly bushes. A rat, sleek and gleaming, scampered out of the undergrowth and startled him. He watched it vanish, thinking there was something odd about the creature’s appearance, something he couldn’t put his finger on immediately.
He frowned, bent down, peered through the impenetrable tangle of leaves and limbs.
What was it about that rat?
Its whiskers, of course, of course. Wet, stained as if by red wine.
It had been disturbed in the act of feeding. On a dead bird, Dice thought. Some fledgling fallen from a nest, perhaps. A defenseless little thing. An innocent. Such was the cruelty inherent in nature.
He reached forward and parted the strands of shrubbery with his hands.
16
Al Brodsky arrived promptly at eight thirty, carrying two four-packs of Grolsch in paper sacks. Samsa opened two bottles, handed one to Brodsky. Inside the living room Al sat down close to the fireplace, where the last of the sun created a fuzzy yellow rectangle around his feet.
‘Cheers, Greg.’
‘Better days.’ Samsa sipped the Czech lager. What was it Brodsky needed to discuss?
Brodsky stretched his legs out, relaxed. ‘Darcy around?’
‘Out on a date.’
‘Who’s the boy?’
‘A kid called Nick Mancuso. He’s at the same school. A senior.’
‘Nick Mancuso … Isn’t he the kid of that guy who’s big in the paper products line? Bobby Mancuso?’
‘That’s him,’ Samsa said.
‘Is it serious?’ Al asked.
‘She says he stifles her.’
‘She’s young.’ Brodsky slipped off his shoes. He had a hole in the heel of a sock. He studied it a moment, then said, ‘It gets easier, you know. In time.’
For a second Samsa thought Brodsky was referring in some oblique way to Darcy, but then realized Al had just skipped to the subject of Harriet. ‘Tess has been gone five years now. I still catch myself talking to her. There’s an absence. But the pain dims to a minor ache.’
Two widowers examining grief. Terrific. Was this what Al had come here to speak about? Samsa didn’t want to talk about the dead. He wanted another kind of conversation: feathery, inconsequential. Department rumors. Dumb jokes. Anything.
He stood at the window and stared out into the street. The sky was suffused with yellows and pinks. A few stray clouds hung in the still air. I want to be free of myself, he thought.
Al said, ‘After a while, you have this need to socialize, check what’s happening, what you might be missing. Then, one day, a lady catches your eye.’
‘And that’s happened to you?’ Samsa asked.
‘More than once.’ Brodsky smiled. The small slitted eyes disappeared in the folds of his face. He looked jovial. ‘I can still get it up. It’s a bit of a crank, I admit. But the machinery’s basically sound.’
‘I hadn’t heard any rumors about you and women,’ Samsa remarked. ‘Either I’m sleepwalking through the department or the grapevine’s shut down.’
‘Maybe I’m just discreet in my old age.’
There’s a future, Samsa thought. That’s what Al is trying to tell me.
‘Off the record, are you handling things okay?’ Brodsky asked.
‘Department things? Personal things? Which?’
‘Either. Both.’
‘I’m doing just fine, Al.’
Brodsky had a stare that at times could penetrate. He fixed you with those small eyes and they bored into your head like two power-driven diamond drill bits. ‘You sure?’
‘Sure.’ Samsa had the sudden thought, Al knows something. But that was ridiculous. What was there to know? Everything had been dreamed, everything was effluence that had seeped from his head.
‘I want to ask you something,’ Brodsky said.
Samsa was holding his breath. This sudden tension was an arrow in his throat. He touched the edge of his broken tooth with the tip of his tongue.
‘I’m thinking of the internal reorganization. I’d like your feedback on how it’s going.’
Samsa relaxed now, drank some beer. Internal reorganization. That was easy. He could deal with that. He could talk about that all day long. All night.
‘I can’t think of any problems,’ he said.
‘You’re getting total co-operation?’
‘Total.’
Brodsky looked a little doubtful. ‘Charlie Bird and Casey are coming through for you?’
‘Religiously,’ Samsa said.
‘I just figured there might be some envy, that’s all. When you got Charlie Bird working the East precinct, and Jack Casey the South, you worry about empire-building. They’re good guys, don’t get me wrong. But if there’s the smallest sign of private fiefdoms I want to know about it. I don’t want any hostility to get in the way of shared information, because it means the chance of something vital getting lost in the shuffle.’
‘I get daily updates on the homicide investigations being conducted by Bird and Casey. They file copies of all their reports with me. I see something I don’t like – work duplicated, fruitless inquiries, guys going off at stupid tangents – I talk with Charlie or Jack and we try to fix the situation. That was the mandate you gave me, Al.’
‘Charlie Bird wasn’t happy in the beginning,’ Brodsky said. ‘Three months ago, when I told him I was reorganizing homicide, bringing it under one roof so to speak, he pitched a fit. “So Downtown controls everything,” he says. “Downtown wins the blue ribbon and Samsa gets to be like the guy on top of the pyramid. What does that make him? Some pharaoh or something? Samsa the First?”’
‘Charlie’s been with the department longer than me,’ Samsa said. ‘He had every right to feel aggrieved.’
‘The only thing really aggrieved him was the fact he knew you were better equipped for the job than himself,’ Brodsky said. ‘He doesn’t have your … call it diplomacy.’
‘I never thought of myself as diplomatic,’ Samsa said.
‘With a slight edge,’ Brodsky remarked.
An edge. Samsa wondered about this, whether he’d lost that edge, if it had become blunted by circumstance. He wasn’t sure.
He was ready for another beer. He moved toward the kitchen. Al Brodsky, shoeless, followed him. Samsa opened the refrigerator, removed two Grolsch bottles.
‘Understand, Greg. The first time you think there’s any blockage in this pipeline, you come to me. No hesitation. No misplaced cop-loyalty crap.’ Brodsky sat on a kitchen stool. He could look intensely serious, as he did at that moment.
‘No, the co-operation’s fine,’ Samsa said. ‘The only drawback from my point of view is strictly personal. I don’t spend enough time with Darcy. She’s at a strange age.’
‘Show me an age that isn’t strange,’ Brodsky said. He wiggled his toes inside his dark socks, staring down at them. The heel that showed through the hole was like a small albino eye. ‘Are you saying in a coy roundabout way that you wished you’d never assumed this responsibility?’
‘No, nothing like that, Al.’ Samsa had the feeling he was being challenged, pinned. I’m not the man for this job. It’s some kind of sham. But life goes on, you told yourself that already. You’re swimming, you have to keep your head above the turmoil of the waters. Everything is dandy. It was a world of appearances. I’ll continue to be the good cop.
He said, ‘If it was the kind of thing that kept me tied to my desk, it might be different. But I still get out. I have cases I work.’
‘I never saw your role as administrative,’ Brodsky said. ‘But any time you think it’s too much, or you start to get that stuck feeling, say so. Jesus Christ, we’ve known each other too long to go beating about bushes, Greg. What is it? Seventeen years?’
‘About,’ Samsa said. That stuck feeling, he thought. The glue on the surface of fly-paper.
Brodsky knocked his beer can against Samsa’s bottle and smiled. ‘Seventeen years, Greg. Weddings and funerals and kids growing up. Laughter and grief. The whole damn thing. And here we are, a couple of hardened survivors.’
‘Just about,’ Samsa said. ‘Let’s go back inside the living room.’
Shadows had lengthened, the sun had almost entirely gone. Samsa switched on a lamp. The telephone rang and he picked it up. It was Eve Lassiter.
‘I’m hitting the streets with young Joshua,’ she said.
‘I figured you would.’
‘There’s always a slight chance he’ll see this kid he says Leeson picked up. If that happens I want to be there.’
‘You’re dressing for the part, I assume,’ he said.
‘Short skirt, long boots, very glossy. This little blouse you can just about see through. I don’t want to be conspicuous. I’m wearing mucho make-up too. Master of illusion.’
Samsa imagined her in short skirt and boots, face made up, strutting her stuff like a hooker.
She said, ‘Have you decided if you’re joining me or not? All you’d have to do is park your car in the vicinity where we can keep in touch. And if anything happens, I know you’re there.’
‘Take Billy Fogue.’
‘Fogue’s loud and sexist. I’d prefer you, Lieutenant.’
‘Get Duff then. He’s on duty.’
‘I’ll get Duff if you’re chickening out.’
‘I’m not chickening out. I’ve got company.’
‘Female by any chance?’
‘The chief.’
‘Oh, hobnobbing.’
Samsa caught his own reflection in the darkening window. ‘I’ll be home all night if you need me.’
‘I wish you could see me in this outfit. You’d froth at the mouth.’
‘Are you flirting with me, Eve?’ Darcy had said Eve had the hots for him. He thought about that. Out of the mouths of kids.
‘Could be. Or maybe I’m getting inside this role,’ she answered. ‘I might enjoy trawling the sidewalks. I might just quit the department and take up hooking.’
He pictured her strolling the night, looking provocative but hanging back from the action, turning cars away on some pretext when they approached her. ‘Take good care,’ he said.
‘I always do.’
He hung up, feeling for some reason a little empty.
‘Eve Lassiter?’ Brodsky asked.
‘Yeah. She’s working the Leeson case.’
‘From what angle?’
Samsa told him.
Brodsky said, ‘That neighborhood’s a blight. Vice rounds these kids up, they’re back on the street next day. What can you do? Eve’s a resourceful girl. She just needs a little looking out for. You get along with her pretty well, I hear.’
‘Is there gossip?’
‘Not so much gossip, more a quiet underswell. You have to listen real hard to pick up on it. They say she’s fond of you. Ditto for you.’
‘I like her,’ Samsa said.
‘You got something stronger than beer? I’m starting to get into the mood.’
‘Vodka, cognac.’
Brodsky wanted vodka. Samsa went to the liquor cabinet and poured a glass. Brodsky took the vodka and tasted it, then settled back in his chair with his hands clasped across his stomach. Facing him, Samsa thought, This is a pleasant illusion. This is how it’s meant to be: two old colleagues having a drink, comrades in arms, old times, weddings and funerals. Somewhere there were photographs, Brodsky stiff and ludicrous in a tux, standing directly behind Samsa on the day of his marriage to Harriet. Happy days. Better times.
He turned to the window just as the street lamps came on and cast their customary dullish yellow glow. He drew the curtain, enjoying the idea of keeping the outside world at bay. Nothing existed beyond these walls.
Brodsky said, ‘I’ll help myself to some more of this vodka,’ and he walked to the liquor cabinet.
Al was a lightweight when it came to drinking. He held it up to a certain point, but he reached that borderline fast, and then he became loquaciously sentimental – which meant he’d begin to trample through the undergrowth of the past, and next thing he’d want to drag out the old photograph albums. Remember that time, Greg? You and me and Harriet and Tess, that day on Lake Maska when we hired a boat that almost sank? Remember?
I don’t want to go there, Samsa thought. There were too few pictures of Harriet involved in any kind of activity, outdoor or in. She’d passed through the world like a pale shade, leaving barely a fingerprint.
‘You ought to take it easy, Al,’ he said. ‘If you’re driving.’
‘I’m over the limit, I’ll call a cab.’
Samsa was restless suddenly, thinking of Eve Lassiter, the dark places, the headlights of prowling cars. He understood he should have gone down there to provide back-up. Eve was his protégée. He’d taken her under his wing when she’d first joined the department. He’d recommended her for promotion.
But. Have we ever met before?
Brodsky appeared somber all at once. ‘A year ago already. Hard to believe.’
Here we go. ‘Al, I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Sometimes you got to air the linen closet, Greg.’
‘I just don’t want to talk about it.’
Brodsky was going back for more vodka. On the way to the liquor cabinet he ran his knuckles across the keyboard of the piano. The sound rolled around the room. Samsa heard the strings vibrate under the lid, the after-whisper of notes struck randomly. This house, he thought. This whole goddam house whispers. It never stops. Day and fucking night I hear it.
He opened the front door and stepped onto the porch where the air was muggy. Brodsky came after him, glass in hand.
‘I’m out of line,’ Brodsky said. ‘I know it.’
‘It’s not that, Al. It’s me, it’s my fault. Sometimes I think I have a grip, and then it just goes, and fuck it, fuck it.’ Samsa quit talking. He looked the length of the street, seeing hordes of moths dart and flutter under the lamps. A million potential suicides. The air was strong with the scent of cut grass and chlorine from neighborhood pools.
Al clapped him on his bruised shoulder. ‘I get maudlin. You don’t need to tell me –’
Samsa heard the car before he saw it, a patrol car that loomed out of the dark, roaring down the center of the street, roof lights slicing the night. It drew up at the end of Samsa’s driveway, and the first thing that came into his mind was the idea that something had happened to Darcy. An accident, Nick Mancuso’s frail little VW convertible had crashed, and his head was crammed with pictures of blood and emergency rooms, doctors and orderlies, nurses hurrying with IV drips. Everything hasty. Everything out of control. Madness.
‘Sweet Christ,’ Brodsky said. ‘Is there never any peace?’
A cop Samsa recognized as Randy Harrilyn got out of the cruiser and moved up the driveway to the porch.
Don’t let it be Darcy. Don’t let it be.
Harrilyn was a tall man with a tendency to stoop. He reached the porch steps and looked up, his face the color of a tangerine in the porch light. He stared at Samsa. In that moment, for no good reason he could think of, Samsa knew that Randy Harrilyn wasn’t here on account of Darcy. He just knew, and his heart flopped over into a void, and he was hearing an old Billie Holiday tune slurring and dying inside a cassette deck.
