Good Neighbors (20 page)

Busey licks his lips.

Frank hears a liquid sucking sound coming from his right.

Kees is silent.

Frank looks down at his hands – laced together, resting in his lap – and then back up at Busey. He’s still waiting – waiting for the punchline. Most people don’t start a joke without one in mind.

‘Okay, then,’ Busey says. He looks down at a couple sheets of paper that are sitting on his desk between his elbows, then he picks them up and hands one to Frank and one to Mr. Reynolds. Frank looks at his.

‘I am prepared,’ Busey says, ‘to offer you both a significant cash settlement if you’re willing to sign this agreement saying that the department is not at fault and that you will make nothing that happened tonight a matter of public record. How does that sound?’

‘How significant?’ Mr. Reynolds says, followed by the liquid sucking sound, which is, itself, followed by the sound of swallowing. Frank imagines eating a raw egg.

Busey writes a number on a piece of paper and slides it across the desk.

‘That applies to both of you.’

Frank and Mr. Reynolds look at it.

Then Mr. Reynolds looks up. ‘It doesn’t seem fair,’ liquid suck, ‘that we get the same amount,’ liquid suck, ‘when I’m,’ liquid suck, ‘in so much worse shape.’

Busey purses his lips and whistles between his teeth, presses his palms together, touches them to his chin, and then takes them apart again.

‘Okay,’ he says, finally. ‘Add fifty percent.’

Mr. Reynolds nods.

‘Okay,’ he says.

Busey smiles.

‘That’s what I like to hear. Good man. Mr. Riva?’

Frank doesn’t answer for a long time. He simply stares at the sheet of paper with the blue-ink number scrawled across it.

‘What’s going to happen to Officer Kees?’

‘He’ll be reprimanded and receive a two-week suspension.’

‘With pay?’

Busey nods. ‘Most likely.’

‘So his punishment,’ Frank says, ‘is a paid vacation. This motherfucker tried to kill a man, and he tried to frame me for it, and you’re saying in two weeks he’ll be back on the streets dressed in blue? He should be in prison, not putting other people there.’

Ten minutes ago Frank thought he was going to prison. Now he knows he’s not, and part of him thinks he should just be glad he’s getting out of this at all, but he’s not. He’s not glad. He’s furious. He’s known the world is broken for a long time, he’s known that, but sometimes he’s amazed at how broken; even now, at this point in his life, nearing fifty years old, he can stumble across something that makes him realize all over again that the world is not only broken, but beyond fixing. No amount of glue can ever make it right. And yet, you have to focus on your little part of it, don’t you? You have to focus on your little corner of the world and glue what cracks you can. Otherwise there’s no hope at all.

Captain Busey is saying, ‘A black mark on an officer’s record is a serious matter, Mr. Riva. A
serious
matter.’

‘As serious as murder?’

Busey sighs – an exasperated father.

‘I can appreciate your point of view,’ he says, ‘and I can even understand why it’s going to be hard for you to sign that agreement, monetary benefits notwithstanding. But,’ Busey says, leaning forward on his elbows, glaring with creepily-light gray eyes, bloodshot and yellow at the corners, ‘you will sign, Mr. Riva. It’s no longer a request.’

‘And if I don’t?’

Busey shrugs.

‘We’ve got a stolen TV with your fingerprints all over it.’ He scratches his cheek. ‘And while I don’t know Mr. Reynolds very well, I’m betting it wouldn’t take much to get him to testify against you. Your share of the money, say. And let me tell you something, Mr. Riva. We’re gonna keep that evidence for a long time, and it’s gonna have your name on it. I’m gonna keep it close to me, and you’re gonna keep your mouth shut.’

Frank feels his jaw go tight.

He looks at the agreement clenched in his hand. He looks at the blue-inked number sitting on Busey’s desk.

The world is just broken; that’s all there is to it. You glue together the cracks you can but you don’t let yourself fall through the ones you can’t. Not if you can help it. It won’t do you any good and chances are it won’t do anybody else any good either.

Frank grabs a pen, leans to the desk, signs the agreement, and flings it toward Busey. Then he gets to his feet.

‘I don’t want your money.’

‘Even better,’ Busey says.

‘I’d like to go home now.’

‘Drive him home, Officer Kees. Your suspension is effective upon your return.’

‘I’d prefer if it was someone else,’ Frank says.

‘Drive him home, Officer Kees.’

37

William pulls the station wagon up to the closed garage door with the dent in it. He kills the engine.

He looks at himself in his rearview mirror. Blood is smeared across his cheek. His eyes are vacant and shellshocked.

He told himself it wouldn’t happen again but it has. It has happened again.

He pushes open the driver’s side door and steps out.

Elaine will be mad that he lost the kitchen knife; he’ll have to think up a story about it. Maybe he’ll tell her that he couldn’t find a screwdriver and used the tip to try to unscrew something – he’ll think of what later: maybe he dropped his lighter into the floor vent and needed to take the grate off to get to it, maybe something else – and it snapped off, so he threw it away. Yes. That’s what he’ll tell her when she asks about the knife. He’ll say they need a new set of kitchen knives anyway. These ones have begun to get rust spots on them – stainless steel my ass, he’ll say.

He can’t believe it happened again.

It’s Elaine’s fault for shoving him away. The girl would have lived if he hadn’t gone back, and if Elaine hadn’t pushed him away, he wouldn’t have. He probably wouldn’t have.

How did he become this person he is?

He hates himself.

He walks up the path to his front door, and pushes his way inside. He walks directly to the bathroom. He has blood and dirt under his fingernails. His sweater has large sticky stains of drying blood on it. The fabric is dark, so you can’t tell it’s blood, but it is. The knees of his jeans are still moist from the soil in the flower bed and particles of dirt are ground into the weave of the fabric.

He undresses and looks at himself in the mirror. He does not like what he sees.

He steps into the shower and turns on the water.

38

David steps out of the diner carrying a greasy brown paper bag. The diner opens at five o’clock in the morning and is one of a few decent places he and John like to grab a bite at this hour. There’s also an all-night diner not far from here but the food there is made for drunks who can’t taste anything weaker than a ninety proof.

The first time David tried to order two cheeseburgers here, the lady behind the counter – he found out later her name was Annette – looked at him like he was crazy. ‘How about a couple eggs over easy and some hash browns?’ she said. But that was breakfast food, and he’d already eaten breakfast. He ate it at nine o’clock the night before. After five minutes he’d managed to convince her that he really did want two cheeseburgers, and also some onion rings. Two orders. Annette went to the window between the front and the kitchen, talked to the cook in hushed tones – as if they were discussing state secrets – and came back. She told him it would have to be cheeseburgers and fries, no onion rings, but otherwise it was all right. So burgers and fries it was and burgers and fries it is. When he walks through the door these days Annette greets him by name. The food is good and he doesn’t have to deal with the swaying depressives putting off alcoholic fumes that the all-night joints always seem to attract. He doesn’t like to see those guys – it’s like looking into a mirror that reflects the future rather than the present. He can barely face today; he wants nothing to do with tomorrow, not till it’s here – and probably not then either.

He glances up at the gathering gray clouds and pulls open the door. Inside the ambulance, he sees that John’s already pulled out the ice chest and is drinking his first beer. They usually share a six pack with dinner. He pulls the door closed behind him.

He digs through the greasy paper bag and pulls out John’s cheeseburger, which is wrapped in yellow paper smeared with mayonnaise. He hands it to him, as well as his little paper tray of fries. Then he grabs a Schlitz from the ice chest between their seats, peels off the top, and tosses the metal tab aside. He takes a swallow. It tastes good; after three, and maybe another sip or two from his flask, he might just start to feel human.

He burps and then goes to work on his burger. He’s starved.

‘You haven’t said much since we dropped that guy off,’ John says through a mouthful of pink ground beef and American cheese.

‘I haven’t had much to say.’

‘What did he do to you?’

David shrugs. ‘The details don’t matter. They never do.’

They eat silently for a while, taking occasional swallows from their beers, dipping fries into smears of ketchup loaded into the corners of their paper trays, wiping greasy fingers on their pants, burping, and eating some more.

‘But you wanted him dead,’ John says after a while. David drains his beer, tosses the tin can into the ice chest, grabs a fresh one, and opens it. He washes some soggy potato and some soggier bread down his throat with it, looks out into the dull-colored morning.

‘I’m not finished with him,’ he says. ‘Not even close.’

39

Thomas steps out of the shower, grabbing a towel from a rod as he does, and wiping himself dry with it. It’s the same towel he’s used since the last time he did laundry over a week ago and it’s beginning to smell a bit sour. Dead skin clinging to a towel doesn’t smell good even if it’s clean dead skin. After he’s dry he hangs the towel back on the rod and grabs a pair of clean underwear he set out on the toilet seat. He steps into them and out of the bathroom, trailed by a cloud of swirling steam.

He walks to the closet and slides the door open. He grabs a pair of blue-gray pants with a black stripe running down the outside seam and steps into them. He thinks about last night. He thinks about Christopher who is standing at the bedroom window looking out. He grabs a folded undershirt from the closet shelf and slips into it. It’s insideout but that doesn’t matter. He pulls a light blue United States Postal Service shirt from a hanger and slips his arms into it. He turns away from the closet buttoning the shirt and looks at Christopher. The early-morning light is shining through the window and onto his face.

‘What are you looking at?’ Thomas says, finishing the last button.

Christopher looks at Thomas, then looks back to the window, through the window.

‘I don’t think anyone called the police,’ he says.

‘Oh, God,’ Thomas says, remembering that shadow of a woman out there last night. ‘I think you’re right. We would have seen the lights or heard sirens or something. Is she still out there?’

Christopher shakes his head.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I don’t see her, anyway. But look.’

Thomas suddenly gets a knot in his stomach. He realizes he doesn’t want to look. He realizes he’s not going to like what he sees. He doesn’t have to see it to know he won’t like it.

He walks slowly to the window, looking at Christopher’s face as he does, trying to find out what’s outside by reading his expression, trying to prepare himself.

But then he’s at the window and he looks out.

Something terrible has happened; they have let something terrible happen.

The courtyard is now completely visible, the outside lamps still on, the morning light beginning to fill what shadows they do not. The sun is still not yet visible above the horizon, but it has managed to bleach the sky a dirty white color, the gray clouds rumbling around up there, loitering, looking for trouble.

There is a pool of blood near the courtyard entrance by Austin Street. A trail leading to one of the benches in the courtyard. The bench is splattered with blood and there is another pool of it just a foot away on the concrete – enough blood there, Thomas thinks, for a rodent to drown in. There are a few women’s bloody footprints, but most of the footprints – and there are dozens of them – are man sized, the angry stomps of a man on the hunt. Then there’s the bloody trail of handprints leading from the bench, around the corner, to the front, the path accented by various smears and hash marks. Someone on hand and knee, attempting an escape.

The courtyard is simply a canvas on which the horror of the night has been painted. Thomas has never seen so much blood in his life.

40

The reason Christopher didn’t see Kat is because she’s around the corner, on the Austin Street-side of the building, but she’s still out there on her hands and knees, dripping blood, trying to get to her apartment. The knife is still in her chest, throbbing as if it had its own pulse, throbbing like a thumb that’s been smashed with a hammer. And she is trying not to slip on her own blood as she crawls. Trying not to slip because if she does she’ll fall on the knife and send it deeper into her chest.

She feels like she’s drowning.

She feels an itch in her throat, which makes her cough – choke, gag – and a long flow of liquid oozes from inside her, a long string of congealed blood.

She’s bleeding into herself. She believes she is drowning in her own blood.

She is cold everywhere.

How many hours and hours and hours must have passed? She can’t imagine. It feels like it’s been days – she feels like she must have missed half a dozen sunsets and sunrises. She knows it’s not true; she would have seen people if that were true – people going to work and coming home from work, people checking their mail, people driving by on the street, people parking in the Long Island Railroad parking lot across the street – and one of them surely would have helped her. It can’t have been days but it feels like it must have been. She imagines herself here motionless while people dart around her as if in timelapse footage, moving here and there, faster than is humanly possibly, getting into and out of cars, coming home with groceries, taking out trash, the sun rising and setting in mere moments, clouds forming and breaking apart again, flowers opening and closing and dying. She imagines herself here motionless while the world moves on around her. Then she imagines herself gone.