Short Ride to Nowhere (2 page)

You and I look at each other wondering, which of us is going home?
 
Which of us is falling deeper into the bin?

Nolan finished humming and swallowed.
 
He glared at Jenks and said, “Thank you for coming all this way to talk with us, Mr. Jenks.”

“I didn’t know I would be,” Jenks said.
 
“I didn’t realize you’d be here at the hospital waiting for me.”

It stopped Nolan, made him resettle in his seat.
 
He wasn’t used to people talking back to him, jockeying to lead the conversation.
 
He was ugly enough to usually run the show from the word go.
 

He met Jenks’s eyes and held his gaze for longer than was necessary, the two of them getting each other a little more in focus. “Would you mind telling us exactly what was your relation to–”

The cop trailed off, hoping Jenks would just jump right in, finish the sentence.
 
But Jenks was eager to find out how they were defining Hale now.
 
The patient?
 
The victim?
 
The killer?
 
He could see that Nolan wanted to clear the books and blame the girl’s death on Hale.
 
Wynn just kept angling his chin as he checked out the photos on the board, viewing faces and gauging the sickness of others.
 
Somewhere in the hospital someone screamed, “Mama!”
 

The doc hadn’t started scribbling yet.
 
His pen was poised and his socks told everyone, I am plaid. I am on display; I rule the world and brook no opposition.

“He was a friend,” Jenks said.

That wasn’t the complete truth, but it was a part of it, a tail piece of it, and as much of an answer as anyone here was looking for.
 
The fact was he and Hale hadn’t really liked each other much, but they were neighbors and loners by nature, and they didn’t mind sharing reading copies of their books.
 
They were strange mirror images of each other–the same age, the same desperate tension in their eyes, and most of the same worries.
 
The mortgage, the wife, the anxiety brought on by nightmares of their fathers’ faces.
 

Jenks’ old man had been an ass-kicker, a third-rate boxer and manager of other third-rate boxers.
 
Someone who always provided for the family no matter what he had to do to bring in some extra cash, whether it was making book or maybe breaking someone’s arm for the local syndicate boys.
 
Hale’s old man had been a professor of philosophy, an educated man who always gave Hale a heartbreakingly sad smile whenever he botched tests or papers in college.
 
Whenever he switched majors, whenever he dropped classes, whenever he brought a girl home who said ‘supposebly.’
 
Jenks and Hale used to have a beer on occasion, seated on one of their patios, glancing around at the yard and trying to think of themselves as men of property even with the banks completely fucking with their interest rates, property taxes going wild, the credit card companies coming in for the kill.

They weren’t really friends; they were just two guys living side by side who both felt the world heaving beneath their feet.
 
And they both lost everything practically at the same time.

“And how many years were you friends?” Nolan asked.

“Before he wound up on the skids, I knew him for four years or so.
 
We were next door neighbors.”

Nolan’s pug nose practically begged you to give it a jab.
 
“Before he lost his home.”

“Before I lost mine.”

“I see.”

The cop didn’t see shit, but it hardly mattered.
 
Jenks wasn’t here to help anybody solve anything, he was here to worm as much information out of them as he could before getting back on the street to find out what the hell had happened to Hale.

“And you two were close?”

“We lent each other books from time to time.”

It seems to be a satisfactory response.

“Can you tell us exactly when Mr. Benjamin Hale became homeless and began living on the streets of Manhattan?”

One face in particular caught Jenks’ attention.
 
A young woman, maybe twenty, beautiful, blonde wavy hair the kind you love to run your hands through, that practically owns the wind, with a tilted alluring smile, should be on every magazine cover on the checkout line, and she was wearing the Sojourner pajamas.
 

Jenks said, “We both got divorced and lost our houses at about the same time, a year or so ago.
 
We partnered up and worked on a fishing boat off Montauk after that.”
 
Jenks gave Nolan the name of the captain and the rig.
 
“At the end of the summer we were cut from the crew.
 
I stuck around the eastern end of the island doing odd jobs, but Hale had started to withdraw, couldn’t make the effort to talk anymore.”

The doc perked up, bounced his leg a little, kicked his foot out a little.
 
“You recognized that he was becoming cataleptic...unresponsive...and you made no effort to get him professional help?”

The plaid socks said, I curse you.
 
I spit at thee.
 
My minions will cut out your heart.

Jenks said, “You mean why didn’t I put him into a mental institution where he could either burn to death or cut his own throat?”

It shut the shrink down, jotting more notations.
 

Jenks continued.
 
“One day he just wandered off.
 
I trailed him to the train station where he took the commuter in to Penn.
 
I hunted around for a couple of weeks before I picked up his trail.
 
He was selling books he found in Dumpsters on a folding table in Times Square.
 
He was known in the area.
 
People liked him.
 
Especially the local book dealers. Hale seemed to be rousing some.”

Wynn nodded.
 
He’d heard this part before.
 
They’d questioned everyone in the area too.
 
They knew the story.
 
But the cops didn’t know anything after that.
 
Who the girl was or what had led to Hale’s knifing or why he’d taken such a big step backwards into catatonia.
 
Or catalepsy the shrink had said.
 
Jenks didn’t know the difference.
 
He didn’t trust that the fucking doctor did either.

“And where do you reside now, Mr. Jenks?”

“I live out of my car,” Jenks said.

“That’s called vagrancy.”

“Only if I stay in any one place for too long.
 
And I don’t.”

Jenks had been sleeping out on the beaches.
 
He was tan, more fit than he’d ever been before, and keenly aware that there wasn’t a person in the world who would give a shit if he went out of the game the way Hale did.

“Has anyone told his wife?” Jenks asked.

They all ignored him.
 
They’d been waiting for a significant question from Jenks, just so they could ignore it and prove who was in charge.
 

“Your friend is suspected of murdering a nine-year-old girl,” Nolan said with a growl.
 
It was a well-practiced growl.
 
It proved just how serious he was, a purveyor of truth, a fighter for justice, who did not like nine-year-old girls being murdered.
 
Like if you didn’t growl, you must just love it when children get knifed.
 
“She was stabbed.”

“How often?”

“Excuse me?”

“How many times was she stabbed?”

Again he was ignored, except that Wynn perked up and the doc’s plaid socks said, Oh ho, oh, so you vish to know about zee details.
 
Zees details, zey arouse you, yes?

“And your thoughts?” Nolan asked.

“My thoughts?”

“Yes.”

“My thoughts are he didn’t do it.
 
My thoughts are that he got knifed trying to protect the little girl.
 
And you have nothing to dispute that.
 
Because if you did, you wouldn’t be asking me my thoughts.”
  

“You went looking for him.”

“I did.”

“Why?
 
Why do you even care?”

“I already answered that.”

“Not to my satisfaction.”

“Fuck your satisfaction.”

Nolan’s jaw muscles tightened, adding a lean feral appearance to his face.
 
His upper lip skinned back as he began to argue the point, his huge hands tightening into fists, applying enough pressure to the table so that his Styrofoam coffee cup began to dance in place.
 
Jenks wondered how many wormy criminal suspects had cracked thanks to Nolan’s theatrics.
 
Enough of them for him to keep up the act.
 
But how Nolan he think it was going to play out with Jenks, a guy who was here voluntarily, to help out, a guy with nothing left in the world to lose?

Wynn shifted his body slightly and came around to face Jenks.
 
“We don’t know who the girl was.
 
Do you have any idea?”

 
“No.”

“He had a daughter about the same age.”

“Yeah.
 
Sandy.”

Wynn let it sit out there, calmly waiting.
 
The only sound their heavy breathing, the doc scratching, distant shouts from patients and some slamming doors.
 
No wonder Hale had decided to off himself.
 
After this, what else was there?
 
Where else could you go?

Jenks looked at the photo of the crazy beautiful girl again.
 
He took the reins again, as he was expected to do.
 
“You think Hale was so nuts that he kidnapped a girl about his daughter’s age because he couldn’t distinguish reality from fantasy, that it?
 
But you know that’s not the case.”

“And how do we know that?” Nolan asked.

“If it was, you’d have a missing child report and you’d know who the hell she was.”

There went Wynn, grinning.
 
He liked dealing with smart people, even if they were on the other side of the table.
 

Hale had probably been offed for whatever he had in his pockets.
 
How much could it have been?
 
Ten bucks, maybe.
 
This was the age of a new Depression.
 
You had contemporary versions of Bonnie and Clyde roaming the highways.
 
Middle age mutts like Jenks with no future and damn little past.
 
With no homes and no money, no health insurance, no benefits, no stability.
 
No chance, no choice but to watch their kids get jacked on meth with no hope for ever grabbing hold of the American dream.
 
Jenks wondered what the next play was supposed to be.
 
“What about the blade?”

“What about it?”

“Learn anything?
 
Fingerprints?
 
Where it was sold?”

“No prints.
 
It was clean but old.
 
They used to be popular back in the fifties, sixties.”

“Sure.”
 
Jenks nodded, thinking about his old man.
 
His father had once come home with a butterfly blade, flipping it around but unable to do it with any precision.
 
He’d taken it off some mook who’d pulled it after being cornered in an alley.
 
Jenks remembered blood on his father’s knuckles as he’d spun the knife trying to get the handles to line up, Jenks’ terrified reflection showing in the shining metal.