Lush Life (50 page)

"You buy something or go," the owner yapped from behind his counter.

"Yeah, yeah." Gameboy waved him off. "I like to get stuff here. I used to keep it like a collection in my house, but then that guy told me it's bad luck, so . . ."

"What is?"

"All this shit s for dead people. You burn it at a Chinese funeral so the dead guy can take it with him to the afterland . . . except this here?" Gameboy passed Tristan the wrapped play money "These shits are Hell Bank notes. You burn them to bribe the king of hell so that the dead guy don't have to stay there too long."

"In hell?" Tristan eyed the stacked and shelved bogus goods and wanted it all, one of each.

"And you can never give any of this shit for a present to anybody because that's like a curse on them. That's like saying you want that person dead."

"So why do you buy it?"

"Sometimes I like to burn all this myself, like on the roof of my building? And sometimes I just give it to people I want dead."

"How do you know this?"

"I just do." Then, holding up the Berserker game box, 'You play this?"

"Nah."

"I could like teach it to you in about twenty minutes." "OK."

"You live in Twenty-two Oliver?"

"Yeah."

"I'm in Thirty-two St. James." "OK."

"You want to come by sometime?"

"Yeah, OK." No; holding his breath against the fat boy's funk.

"I'm in twelve-D." "OK."

"Shits easy"

"Awright."

Gameboy went up to the counter and paid for his money, Tristan following, brushing his fingers along stacks of paper cigarette lighters and Hell Bank credit cards and perforated driving gloves.

Outside on Mulberry, Gameboy peeled off half an inch of money and gave it to Tristan. "This ain't a curse on you or nothing. Just remember to burn them shits. Otherwise the king of hell is gonna come up here and take it from you himself."

"OK." Tristan nodded, then wandered across the street, ostensibly to watch some Chinese full-court, but really to examine more closely the paper Rolex that he had boosted from the store.

Eric had gone down to the basement for a quick nap between shifts and slept for five hours, come to in a panic, raced into the locker room to throw water on his face, brush his teeth, and finger-comb his hair, then charged upstairs still tucking in his shirt.

The first person he saw was the hostess covering for him. "Why didn't anybody wake me?"

"Wake you from where?" walking away without ever looking at him.

The next one was Bree, hefting a tray of drinks.

"You working a double?"

"Yup," throwing him a tight, impersonal smile on her way past.

"Me too," he said to the air.

A few minutes later, heading back to the pulpit after seating a foursome, Eric saw a solo waiting for him there; the guy in his thirties, sporting a striped boatneck shirt and a beret.

"Just one?"

"Are you Eric?"

Bracing for the next shitstorm, Eric just stared at him.

"Paulie Shaw said you might want to talk."

"Paulie?"

The culture dealer; Eric needing a moment to place the name, the conversation.

A vision then came to Eric of the Eighth Precinct detectives entrapping him in a dope buy to squeeze him into cooperating; of more shit in the papers, of killing himself.

"Paulie Shaw?" the possible undercover tried again.

The Picasso shirt was a nice touch.

"I don't know you," Eric said.

"All right, whatever." He shrugged, then nodded to the menu. "Can I get a table?"

An hour later Eric brought over the coffee himself, sat down across from the Halloween Frenchman.

"So, who are you?"

"Morris."

Eric sat there, trying to chess this through.

Bree came over, bused the table without looking at him once.

"Come to my office," Eric said.

"OK. You tell me," agonizing over the least indictable phrasing, "what might I want to talk about . . ."

Morris continued to stroll about the low cellar, eyeing the graffiti on the joists. Then, without taking his eyes from the crude messages overhead, he reached into his jeans and passed over a slim tube of paper like a European sugar packet.

Eric unraveled the twisted ends: four, five lines' worth, a BJ-in-the
-
bathroom special.

Embarrassed by his shaking hands, he passed it back. "After you."

"I don't do that stuff."

"Me neither."

Sighing, Morris took a Bic pen from the neck of his boatneck shirt and, using the long clip on the cap as a scoop, did half the powder. "I'll be up all night now," passing it back. "Your turn."

The flake brought tears to his eyes; Eric asking the price for an ounce before he was even done blinking away the prisms.

"Twelve hundred," Morris said.

"For an ounceT All caginess lost to the singing in his blood. "What the hell, Maurice, I may not be Superfly, but I'm not Jed Clampett either, man, Jesus Christ, cut a girl some slack." Eric suddenly so slick.

"Well, what were you thinking?"

"Seven hundred/'

"Funny."

"Funny?"

Morris spasmed, did a little jig off the coke. "Shiver me timbers, Popeye." "What?"

Til go eleven fifty but thats it. Guh," tossing his head like a horse.

"Seven fifty."

"Do you see me standing here with a pushcart or something?"

"Eight and that's as I low as I go," Eric said, then, "as high."

"Well, look." Morris patrolled the cellar stiff-armed, silently clapping his hands. "I mean you can bop on over to the Lemlichs, try to score your eight-hundred-dollar ounce there, and either walk away with a bag of Gold Medal or not walk away at all, OK?

"But this right here is signed, sealed, and delivered, no-risk white man's coke for a white man's market. Pricey, but worth it. You can step on it two, three times, it'll still be good to go, or even if you don't want to bother, at twenty a twist, a hundred a gram, you still clear sixteen hundred on the package. It takes money to make money, hoss; if it didn't, every pauper'd be a king."

"Eight fifty."

"Up all night for nothing," Morris muttered, then scrawled a phone number on the back of the empty coke wrapper, passed it back to Eric with another complimentary full twist from his jeans.

"Tell you what. Take this, think on it some more, change your mind, call the number, OK?"

"Eight seventy-five."

"Bye now."

Rejuvenated by the blow and by the knowledge of that second twist in reserve, Eric remained in the cellar after Morris had left. He thought of Ike Marcus, of Bree, of how he could drink all night now and be OK.

And the dig about going to the Lemlichs? Why not? Anybody over there in the PJs who stood to profit off the sale of an ounce, who had their shit together enough to even have an ounce to sell, would never be so boneheaded, so shortsighted, as to kill the goose.

Takes money to make money . . .

He was going to the PJs after his shift tonight; no, fuck it, going now, get somebody to cover and go.

He marched back up to the dining room and stepped to the pulpit.

"Listen I have a personal emergency," laying a hand on the hostess who had covered for him earlier, the girl looking down at her arm as if he had just licked it. "I ll be back in a while."

As he made for the door, he crossed paths with Bree, carrying a tray of desserts.

"I didn't mean to come down on you like that," she murmured. "I guess you have your reasons," then moved on before he could respond.

Eric took a breath, rubbed his face, then returned to the reservations pulpit.

Maybe he'd go tomorrow night.

At ten that evening, Matty was at home, gearing up to walk over to 27 Eldridge, hang around the shrine for a while then maybe head over to the No Name to consult with his mixologist, when his cell rang.

"Yeah, hey, this is Minette Davidson. I was wondering, I need to talk to you."

"Yeah, sure."

"I'm downstairs."

"Downstairs?" Then, realizing that she thought he was at the precinct, "Give me two minutes."

She was seated on the bolted rack of molded plastic chairs in the wedge-shaped vestibule where he had first laid eyes on her husband, staring at that same wall of memorial plaques over the reception desk.

"Hey"

She whipped her head to him, looking a little wild beneath the rough corona of her hair, then gestured to the epigraph beneath the bronze profile of patrolman August Schroeder, killed in 1921.

" 'Grief is a country unto itself,'" she read. "No argument there."

"Come on out," he said.

Given the massive bridge supports that dominated the immediate area, at night the view directly outside the precinct was the same at nine in the evening as it was at five in the morning: lifeless, save for the coming and going of police and the overhead rumble of unseen traffic.

They stood next to each other in the desolate silence; Minette, despite a heavy sweater, hugging herself in the still-warm October air.

"So what can I help you with," he finally said.

"Billy spent all day trying to put together twenty thousand dollars for the reward pot, are you aware of that?" Her eyes roaming the shadows without focus.

"Yeah, 1 am."

"He said it was your idea."

"Look, it was, but-"

"I just want to make sure it was real."

"1 mean, there's no guarantee . . ."

"That it came from you." "It did."

"OK." Nodding, still scanning the heartless view. "That's good enough for me."

"You didn't need to come all the way down here. We could have talked on the phone."

"I'm sorry."

"No, no, I meant as a burden on you."

"Yeah, no, well, I guess I just needed to get out of there for a little, for a few minutes."

"Your place."

"Yeah. It's like a tiger pit now sometimes, so just, you know, lor a few minutes."

"Sure," he said, then, "Where's your, where's Nina?"

"At my sister's with her cousins. I just need a little break."

The desk sergeant came outside for a smoke, nodding to Matty, then stepping away to give them privacy, but a moment later a van pulled up, and a moment after that four vice cops were escorting a procession of six Asian women in cuffs to booking, the first in line the tallest, most attractive, and well dressed, the trailing five looking like peasants: squat, with pushed-in faces and dazed expressions.

"Aw, fuck no," the sergeant moaned, "not Oriental Pearls."

"Sorry there, Sarge," the lead cop said.

"Where the hell do I go now?" he bawled, the vice crew cracking up.

"This funny, huh?" the tallest hooker snapped. "I make good money More than you."

"So what? My wife makes more money than me."

"She do half-and-half too?"

"That's what they tell me." Cracking everybody up again.

"You know what?" Matty said, laying a hand on Minette's arm. "Come upstairs."

He steered her through the vacant squad room into the lieutenant's office, pulled the interior blinds, and parked her on a leatherette couch half-piled with case reports.

"Do you want something to drink?" Pulling up a chair.

She shook her head, then hunched over and put her face in her hands, Matty once again giving her a moment, then, "What's going on."

"I didn't bargain for this," she whispered, hiding her eyes.

Matty nodded, thinking, Who does.

"I loved that kid, I swear to God, but Jesus . . ."

"You know what?" Resting a hand lightly on her arm. "You'll do what you have to do."

"How do you know." Hiding now behind the heel of her fist.

He didn't, but what could you say.

"Look, it's only been a week."

"Exactly." Another defeated whisper.

"I tell you what." Matty hunched forward. "You take care of your family, and I'll take care of everything else."

He sounded rock solid, like what he was saying made any kind of sense, but it was more than just a positive-thinking con job; he personally wanted her to be stronger; that's the way she came to him in his visions and he insisted on it now.

"You take care of them. You can do that," he said down low, putting everything he had into coming off both sober and supernaturally prescient, his mouth inches from her lowered head. "I know you can."

She finally raised her eyes to him, to the all-knowing tone of his voice; looked at him with a desperate and helpless attentiveness.