Lush Life (38 page)

"He sounds like a great kid."

"He is," Billy said, then abruptly stood up, his chair roaring backwards across the floor. "Can I show you something?"

They went out into the front room, pulsating now with a mixture of bridge and tunnel, Eighth Squad detectives, and some of the more gussied-up locals, but tonight there seemed to be more police than usual, Matty seeing why right away, the return of Lester McConnell, a detective transferred six months ago from the Lower East Side to the Joint Terrorist Task Force and relocated to Washington, most likely here as part of an advance Dignitary Protection Unit detail for the president's visit to the UN. Lester was big, huge, six-five, 350 pounds, standing at the bar now drinking beer, tilting his chin to the ceiling and spewing cigarette smoke like a humpback. And new guys from the squad were still coming in, leaning in to greet Lester with hard, slappy hugs; the ones who had been there awhile sitting kind of sideways on their stools, still as Buddhas, drunk out of their skulls, eyelids rising to voices in their own sweet time or staring at the cell phones clipped sideways on their belts and praying for peace on earth.

Matty had always liked McConnell. He moved towards the bar to shake his hand on the way out.

"So hold on," McConnell boomed to the crowd. "This fucking idiot said what? 'Not tonight, my man'? Jesus Christ, what else did I miss around here?"

Matty's gut flipped.

Some of the cops, recognizing Billy, quickly looked away, embarrassed and angry, the conversation beneath the music dying down to coughs and mutters. And McConnell, sensing something wrong, picked up from the expressions and the abrupt silence, from the breathless look on Billy's face, from Matty's proprietary hand on his shoulder, that he'd just stepped on his dick big-time. So instead of hailing Matty, he glared at him: The fuck did you just do to me.

Matty felt lousy for both McConnell and Billy, then even worse when Billy said, no need to lower his voice under the music, "It's not his fault. I probably shouldn't have come here to begin with," then led the way out onto Delancey Street.

A few moments later they were standing before the shrine, which tonight looked more scattered than ever; Matty giving it another few days before it disappeared forevermore into the homicide trivia of the city.

"Have you . . . You've had guns pointed at you somewheres along the line, yes?" Billy asked.

"Not as much as you might think," Matty said.

"I did, one time, what was that, twenty years ago? I'm supervising emergency repairs on Avenue C during the blackout? I walk around the corner to a bodega about eleven at night, these two junkies pop out of the shadows, ones got a Saturday-night special, piece of shit probably wouldve blown off his hand if he pulled the trigger. But I swear to God, someone's pointing any kind of gun at you like that? It is paralyzing. It is there. I couldn't take my eyes off it. I couldn't even move to give them my wallet, just told them what pocket it was in, next thing I know I'm alone, my knees are going like jackhammers. So, what Ike, what my son did? Step to a gun like that? Where did he get the guts to do that? Can you imagine that? The courage that took?"

"What did you want to show me, Billy."

"I don't give a damn. Drunk, sober, smart, stupid, staring down a barrel and making a move irregardless?" Billy suddenly twitched, a quick rippling tic. "Fucking hell."

"Billy"-touching his shoulder-"what did you want to show me."

"Do you believe in dreams?"

"I never know how to answer that one."

"Last night?" Billy said, avoiding looking at the tattered newsphoto of his son still taped to the wall of 27 Eldridge. "I dreamt Ike was fighting off lions. I was too scared to help him. I kept finding reasons not to jump in."

"That's just-"

"Guilt. Yeah, I know, but look."

Billy pointed to the building facade and there they were, lions, half a dozen of them ornamenting the upper stories of brickwork in front of the murder spot; pitted, century-old grimestone beasts carved open
-
mawed and snarling.

"I don't understand why that guy won't help you on this."

"Who," Matty asked, feeling for his car keys.

"If he didn't do it, why would he care about immunity?"

There was a dangerous word-for-word repetitiveness in Billy's complaint, Matty thinking, And so it begins.

Half an hour later Matty sat parked with him in front of his building in Riverdale, Billy in no rush to go upstairs.

"So let me ask you something." Matty said. "It's really none of my business, but, your wife . . ."

Billy looked at him.

"Maybe you don't want to deal with her on this for whatever ... I don't know, you're an adult, she's an adult. But the kid. The girl." Matty shrugged helplessly. "You seem like a decent guy."

Billy's chin disappeared quivering into the arc beneath his mouth. "We talk," he managed to get out. "We talk."

Minette came out of the building a moment later, crossed the pavement barefoot to the car, and reached through the driver's window to lay a brief hand on Matty's arm. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Don't be," Matty said.

As Billy got out on the passenger side, she walked around the front to him and he broke down, reaching for her like a child.

Matty watched as she guided her husband back home, then he continued to sit there for a few minutes after they were gone.

On his way back down the West Side Highway, he nearly tore the car apart searching for Sarah Bowen's phone number before admitting to himself that he'd lost it.

Handcuffed to the arm of Lugo's office chair, Albert Bailey winced in ostentatious discomfort as he spoke to someone on a squad-issued cell phone. Daley and Lugo sat facing him in the otherwise deserted room, their fingers laced across their guts and their high-tops ankle-crossed up on their desks.

"How about the boy Timberwolf?" Albert said into the phone. "Timberwolf in Cahan . . . No one's gonna mess with you over there if you're goin' over to do business . . . Just rent it off him or somesuch, I'll pay you back soon's I get clear of this mess, soon's I get clear. . . Bring it to in front of St. Mary's on Pitt and I'll meet you . . . Naw, naw, naw, the police ain't gonna do nothing to you, man . . . Look, I got to get them a hammer or I'm long gone, I swear on my unborn child, man . . . Awright, call me back, call me back. This number right here. Call me back." Then, flipping the phone shut, "He ain't calling me back."

"I hope he does, brother." Lugo yawned into the back of his hand. "For your sake."

Albert started undulating a little, as if to soothe himself.

"Anybody else you can call?" Daley asked, his ankle holster playing peekaboo with the cuff of his jeans as he idly rocked in his flex-backed office chair.

"I would if 1 could, man, but a gun, I'm not . . . That's never been my thing, guns . . ." Wincing again as he tried to get a new lay of the cuff biting into his wrist.

"No, no, I hear you," Lugo said mildly, "but for real, there are those that subscribe, correct?"

"Yeah, but me, I'm not . . . see, you fellas, you don't know me. All's you saw was a black man in a hooptie holdin' a hundred dollars' worth of brown."

"Don't forget the boxcutter."

"Like, for example, I'm a news buff. You searched my car, I probably had a newspaper in there, right? I could tell you about anything, Tyco, Amron, steroids, bin Laden, Rove . . ."

"Who's Rove?" Daley asked.

"Shit, my girl? She's three months heavy now with my first child. A thirty-five-year-old black man just having his first kid? You know I was waiting."

"Well, we're trying to help you here," Lugo said, peering at his watch, "but it's a gun or you might not be there for the coming-out party."

"And then some," Daley added.

Bailey closed his eyes and spoke faster, as if to fend off, to drown out. "See, my girl, she's not, she's not a street girl, has got a college diploma, I mean, I don't know what she saw in me, you know? And like, at first? It was too easy to fool her about this stuff ... Be high and say I'm just tired. She's innocent, you know? But sometimes being innocent, like, if you got a conscience? The innocent ones can be a lot harder to lie to than the wise ones. So like six months ago I went and confessed to her about my addiction? I tell you, man, she up and surprised the hell out of me, didn't even blink. Tied me to the bed for two days till I was clean, just like the Wolfman."

"Wow," Daley said.

"But in all fairness to myself? I'm not too bad a guy . . ." Bailey chattering, rocking with ache, "Like, out on the street? I'm kind of the neighborhood babysitter. I mean, people know I'm, you know . . . But I don't ever do it in front of anybody, I don't entice and shit ... I started a, a chess club, a basketball team. In high school? I was a athlete. Man, I never even so much as smoked a cigarette until I was twenty -
five. I couldn't stand the smell of them things."

"So what happened?"

"Curiosity," Albert muttered.

"That sucks," Lugo said, eyeing the time on the cable box: 1:15. "Why don't you try your buddy again."

"I do, you know what's gonna happen? He ain't gonna pick up."

"Try," Daley said.

Albert did, and got the voice mail. "Ey, yo . . ." he began halfheartedly, then abruptly jackknifed in his seat, as if attempting to pick something up off the floor, came back up hissing in pain.

"You're starting to come off a little squinchy there, brother . . . You getting the grips?"

"Yeah." His face bunched, then went pop-eyed wide. "I'm feeling it now. This ain't gonna be fun in there."

"We keep wanting to help you out, man." Lugo raised his hands. "But it's a two-way river."

"Yeah, I know, I know, but . . ."Albert's hand fluttered above the cell phone. "Fuck it. It s what I deserve."

The large, near-empty room descended into a brief disappointed silence, which was abruptly disrupted by Geohagan and Scharf escorting their own last-call collar through the door, an overweight Latino kid sporting a Yankees bomber jacket and a long, braided pigtail. They steered him to a desk as far away from Lugo and Daley's play as possible, cuffed him to the chair, and placed Scharf's cell phone on the table before him.

"You know the drill, bro," Geohagan said, "so start dialing."

Matty was at the beach with Minette and his own sons, who were little kids again, when his cell jerked him awake.

"What am I supposed to tell myself," Billy hissed in his ear, "it was his time? He was summoned? It was for his own good? He's better off now? He's romping in some, some, cloud meadow? He was sacrificed to prevent some greater evil from happening?"

"OK, look-" Matty began.

"And my son isn't watching over me. He doesn't live on in my heart. He doesn't talk to me. I talk to me and what I say to myself-"

"OK, hang on, stop."

"Cherish your memories . . . My memories feel like knives and I would gladly burn them out of-"

"Just stop"

"And that guy who's not helping you? A few hours in jail and now he won't go through a mug book? The Tombs. Fuck the Tombs. My son's got the rest of . . . has eternity in the Tombs."

Chapter
Six.

As Matty was on the phone with Borough Patrol trying to rejig tours for this evenings canvass, Steven Boulware popped up on the TV again, a clutch of microphones bearding his face.

"At one p. M. tomorrow afternoon at the Eugene Langenshield Center on Suffolk Street there will be a memorial service in honor, in celebration, of Ike Marcus, my friend Ike Marcus, followed by a procession to Twenty-seven Eldridge Street, where he"-Boulware struggled-"where he left us. This will be open to all, I invite you all, to come not to mourn his death . . . but celebrate his life, his spirit, his legacy."

"This Boulware kids an actor?" Mullins asked.

"Aspiring," Matty said.

"Got the cameras now."

"Matty." Yolonda holding up the phone. "Dargan from Berkowitz."

Matty braced, Detective Dargan, Deputy Inspector Berkowitz's Bad News Bear. "Hey, Jerry."

"Yeah, hey, Matty, look, we just got word, the president's coming into town tonight instead of tomorrow."

"OK." Matty waited for the other shoe.

"So, we re going to need to postpone your recanvass."

"What?" Matty tried to come off stunned. "Why?"

"The word from on high is to pull manpower from all units, including yours. No excusals."

"Are you fucking kidding me? 1 spent the last two days lining everybody up for this. You couldn't have told me earlier?"

"We just found out ourselves."

"How the fuck can you not know the president's coming in until the day."

"Hey," Dargan said calmly, "I have nothing to do with this. I'm just the messenger."

Fucking Berkowitz.

"Is he in? Let me talk to him."

"Not a good idea," Dargan said.

"And you're taking people from my squad? It's a seventh-day homicide recanvass. You can't take my people."