The Little Sleep (7 page)

I laugh. It’s an ugly sound. “Thanks for the offer, DA, but I get
by. And I’m not blackmailing anyone. If I were, would I be dumb enough to do it while sitting in your office? Give me a little credit.”

“Okay, okay, but Mark, try to take my point of view here. You are presenting me an odd set of circumstances, to say the least. You come out of nowhere, telling me that my daughter hired you on the basis of photos that aren’t of Jennifer. Are we on the same page so far?”

I nod. I yawn. The murk is getting used to my chair. The conversation is getting fuzzy. I need to move around, literally put myself on my toes. I stand up and wander behind the chair, pretending to stretch my back.

He says, “Jennifer denies having ever met you before you showed up at Copley. What is it exactly you want me to believe?”

Good question. I want to hear the answer too. I say, “I don’t know what to tell you. Kids lie to their parents all the time, especially when they’re in trouble. Maybe she’s met some bad people. Maybe she’s embarrassed, doesn’t want Daddy to know that someone sent her a threat, some nude photos that look a lot like her, enough so that if released into the wild many folks would believe it’s her in the pictures.” I say it all, but I don’t really believe it. There’s something missing. What’s missing is me. Why am I the one with these pictures?

He says, “No one would believe that woman was Jennifer.”

I shrug. “Sure they would. Presented in the proper light; people want to believe the worst.”

The DA has his chiseled face in hand, another pose, and says, “I’ll have another talk with her later, but right now I believe her, not you.”

It’s not a shock, but it stings. To be dismissed so easily. I fire back with a double-barrel dose of healthy paranoia. “That’s fine. I believe me over both of you. Tell me, DA, how do I know that Jennifer was really the person on the other end of that phone call?”

He rolls his eyes, gets up off the desk, and walks to his office door, holds it open. He says, “Okay, I think our meeting is done. If I hear or see anything more about these photos of yours, don’t be surprised if you find me in your Southie office, warrant in hand.”

“I guess this means no brunch.” I adjust my hat and slip the envelope inside my coat. “I’m only looking out for your daughter’s best interests because I was hired to.”

There’s nothing more to be said. We’re all out of words. I walk out of the office. He shuts the door behind me. I tighten my coat, the envelope pressed up against my chest. The secretary has her head down, computer keys clicking.

The goons aren’t in the waiting room. Maybe they were never here. Maybe, like Jennifer’s mole, they’ve been Photoshopped out. The room is too empty. No chairs are askew, all the magazines are in a pile, nothing out of place, but it’s staged, a crime scene without a body.

I’m alone again, with a client who denies such status and with photos that aren’t of her. I’m alone again, with nothing, and I just want to sit and think, but my head is a mess, trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle that’s suddenly missing all but a few pieces. I need to call a cab, go back to the office, begin at the beginning, focus on those few pieces I do have, and see if I can’t force them to fit together.

After my DA meeting I sat at my office desk and looked at the photos again, searching for clues I might’ve missed. I didn’t see any. In the first photo, the one with the fully clothed Jennifer, there was a bookcase that holds ten books. I couldn’t read any of the slimmer titles, but there was one fat hardcover with LIT written big and white across the bottom of the spine. Library book probably. In the second photo, the camera is angled up, and I see only the ceiling and the wall and the topless Jennifer.

I locked the photos with the negatives in my office desk and slept the rest of the afternoon away on my apartment couch. I dreamed my usual Dad-in-the-backyard dream. There was still a lot of shit to
clean up. No one called and woke me. No one missed my conscious presence. I’m used to it and don’t take it personally anymore.

Now it’s two o’clock in the morning. I’ve been wandering and haunting my own apartment, a ghost without the clanging chains. I can’t sleep. I already said I was sick of irony, but it’s a narcoleptic’s lot.

I turn on the VCR and watch two taped
American Star
episodes, last night’s and tonight’s, the one I slept through. First show has a disco-night theme. Jennifer Times sings “I Will Survive.” She sings well enough, right notes and right key, but she moves stiffly, her hips are rusty hinges and her feet don’t want to stay in one spot, a colt walking in a field full of holes. The judges call her on it. The British guy says she was icy and robotic, a mannequin barely come to life. The people in the audience boo the judge even though he’s correct. Truth is usually greeted with disdain.

Jennifer doesn’t take the criticism well and fires back at the judges. She whines and is rude and short in dismissing the critiques. She turns and tilts her head, rolls her eyes, hands on her hips, stops just short of stomping a foot on the floor. She leaves the stage with, “I thought I was great and they did too,” pointing to the audience. She gets a lukewarm cheer.

Jennifer forgot it’s not about the song you sing or the words you have to say; it’s always about the performance, how you present your public self. She could’ve come off as a hero if she argued with the judges correctly, mixing self-deprecation, humility, and humor with confidence and determination. Maybe she should’ve hired me as a coach instead of her PI.

As the vote-off show queues up next on my tape, I fire up my laptop and check out the Internet message boards and blogosphere reaction. Jennifer was universally ripped and often referred to as a privileged brat. There will be no recovering from that. The show’s voters agreed with the brat tag, and Jennifer is the first finalist knocked out of
American Star.
A quick
THE END
to that singing career, I guess. Jennifer doesn’t take the news on the vote-off show well either. Instead of gracious smiles and hand-waving, we get the nationally televised equivalent of a kid storming out of her parents’ room after a scolding. While I think Jennifer handled her fifteen minutes of fame poorly, I do sympathize with her. Sometimes you just can’t win.

Maybe this means she’ll return my calls when she gets back to Boston. Maybe she’ll apologize for lying to her father, for making my public self appear to be a lunatic. My performance in her daddy’s office needed her help, and she threw me tomatoes instead of roses. Or maybe she won’t call me and the case is dead, now that she’s off the show.

I shut off the VCR and laptop and wander back to bed. Insomnia is there waiting for me. The sheets and comforter feel all wrong, full of points and angles somehow. The pillow is not soft enough; it’s too hard. I’m Goldilocks in my own house.

The awake me can’t help but rerun everything in my mashed-up head. Yeah, I’m stubborn, but I have to try and see Jennifer one more time, somehow straighten out all that’s been bent out of shape and put the case to bed, so to speak.

The phone rings; it sounds far away, in the next universe. I lift my head off my desk, an incredible feat of strength, and wipe my face. Leftover fried rice trapped in my beard and mustache fall onto the Styrofoam plate that had been my pillow. The rice bounces off and onto the desktop and on my lap. I need to make a note to vacuum later.

It has been two days since my meeting with the DA. My office phone has rung only once. It was N
ANNING
W
OK
double-checking my order because the woman wasn’t sure if I’d said General Gao or Kung Pao. The General, of course, as if there was any question.

I spent those two days getting nowhere with Jennifer’s case. Her agency doesn’t return my calls, and I don’t know when her next
public appearance is. I haven’t looked at the photos since locking them in my desk. I wanted them to find their own way out, somehow, before I thought about them again. Doing nothing with them couldn’t be any worse than my previous attempts at doing something.

The phone is still ringing. Someone insisting that we talk. Fine. Be that way. I pick it up.

I say, “Mark Genevich,” my name bubbling up from the depths, sounding worse for the trip.

“Have you found it yet?” A male voice. He sounds older. His voice is deep, heavy with time, like mine.

I’m disappointed. I was really hoping it’d be Jennifer. Instead, it’s a client that I’ve been shirking. I have two abandoned property searches that I’ve put on hold since the Times case came walking in my door.

I say, “No, I haven’t found anything yet. Need more time.” I should just hang up and put my face back into the leftover fried rice.

“I don’t think we have more time, kid. There’s a red car driving around my house. It’s been by four times this afternoon already. Fuck!”

Maybe I’m dreaming and I’ll wake up on my couch or reawake with my face in Chinese food to start it all over again. Maybe this is my old buddy Juan-Miguel putting me on, playing a joke. When we lived together he’d call in shit like this. I decide to play along with the caller a bit longer, gather more information before I make a hasty conclusion; it’s how I have to live my everyday life. That said, this guy’s voice has a kernel of sincerity that’s undeniable.

I say, “Relax. Calm down. Red cars won’t bother you if you don’t bother them.”

“There’re two people in that red car. They know. They know about the pictures somehow. Shit! They’re driving by again, and they slow down in front of my house every time. You didn’t show anyone those pictures yet, did you? You can’t until you find—”

I drop the phone, of course. It slides out of my greasy hands and bounces off my foot. Goddamn it! At least I know I’m awake. I’m awake because I’m usually competent in my dreams and hallucinations.

I pick up the phone. “Sorry, dropped you for a second. I’m still here.” I stand up, walk across the room, and shut the door to my office. No one’s in the hallway, of course, but Ellen could walk in unannounced at any time. “No. I didn’t show anyone anything.” It’s easier to lie because I don’t know who I’m talking to.

He says, “I shouldn’t have given you those pictures. I don’t know what I think I was doing, who I’d be helping. It was dumb. Now we’re both fucked. Should’ve just kept sitting on it like the old hen that I am. This is so screwed up. Shouldn’t have done anything. . . .” His words fall into odd rhythms, stops and starts mixed with letters that he holds too long. He slurs his
s
’s. He’s been drinking. It’s not helping his paranoia—or mine. His voice fades out as he’s talking to either himself or someone else in the room with him; the phone must be dropping away from his mouth. I’m losing him. I have to keep him talking, even if it isn’t to me.

I say, “Hey, pull it together. It’ll be all right once I find”—yeah, find what?—“it.” So I’m not so smooth on my end. I pace around my office and look for something that’ll help me. Nothing’s here. Hopefully he doesn’t process my hesitation.

He says, “You need to hurry up. I don’t want to say anything
more. If they’re driving around my house, it probably means they’re listening in too, the fuckers.”

He and I have seen too many of the same movies. I’m ready to agree with him. I have so many questions to ask this guy, starting with the introductory-level
Who are you?
but I have to pretend I know what’s going on.

I say, “All right, all right. But before you hang up, I think we need to talk again. Face-to-face. It’ll help us sort all this out, trust me. We’ll both feel better about it.”

“Not your office. I can’t come to Southie again. I’m not going anywhere, not right now. I’m staying here, with my doors locked.”

An espresso-like jolt rushes through my system. He’s been here before. I say, “Okay, I’ll come to you. Give me your address.”

He does, but he doesn’t give me his name. No matter. Address only. I write it down. Goddamn, he lives on the Cape, in Osterville, not far from where Ellen lives and where my childhood homestead still stands. Now pieces are fitting together where they shouldn’t, square pegs in round holes.

I tell him I’ll be there tomorrow. He hangs up, and that’s it. The office and phone are quiet again. More old fried rice, looking like mouse turds, is on the desk and on the floor. I’m breathing heavy. I pull out a cigarette and start a fire.

I unlock my drawer and take out the photos. I try on a new set of eyes and look at the girl in the photos. Maybe she’s not Times. And the photos: the matte and shading is faded and yellowing in spots. The photos are old, but how old?

Okay, slow down. I know now that Jennifer was never in my office. Even her presence was part and parcel of the whole hypnogogic
hallucination. But why would I dream her into my office while asleep during phone guy’s little visit? Did I conjure her solely because of the resemblance in the photos? Did her name come up in our initial meeting? Is he just some crazed fan of
American Star
? Maybe he’s a would-be blackmailer, but that doesn’t feel right. Is he telling the truth about being watched?

He didn’t want me to show the pictures to anyone until I found something, and I already showed them to the DA. Oops. Why did phone guy, presumably from Osterville, choose me? Does he know me or Ellen? What am I supposed to find? My note about South Shore Plaza. Red car, Osterville, and a drunk on the Cape.