A Bad Night's Sleep (17 page)

TWENTY-ONE

WE WENT TO THE
Deluxe Diner on Harrison, and when we got back Bill dropped me off at my building. The afternoon sky had turned gray and weighed heavy on the city.

“Don’t get picked up,” Bill said.

“I’ll try not to.”

“You know where you’re going to stay?”

“You want me to tell you?”

“Probably not. But check in, okay?”

I said I would.

His eyes got emotional. I’d seen that happen to other hard men who’d taken a bullet or come close to dying. Now and then, they teared up easily. Their voices choked in their throats. “Take care of yourself,” he said.

“I’ll try.”

He pulled from the curb and I watched him go. I didn’t know why but I felt like he’d given me a Judas kiss.

I rode the elevator to my office. The envelope of fake documents that Bill had given me sat in a file drawer. I got it out and put it in a canvas duffel bag. The duffel bag still had plenty of room. I put in the bottle of Jim Beam, the Baggie of coke, and the vinyl sack of money that Rafael had delivered. Then I rode the elevator back to the street and walked to my car.

*   *   *

A POLICE CRUISER WAS
parked in front of my house. Two cops sat chatting in the front seat. They looked like they were on patrol and taking a break but I knew better. They undoubtedly had a copy of my arrest warrant. I drove past, went around the block, and parked in front of a three-flat that backed against my yard. A concrete path ran alongside the building. I took the path and hopped over the fence that separated the properties, then jogged across my yard, climbed the porch steps, and let myself in through the back door.

I left the lights off, went to my bedroom, pulled a suitcase from the closet, and loaded it with clothes and the stuff I kept in the bathroom medicine cabinet. I made a quick tour of the house and returned with some CDs, a couple of books, and my laptop. They went in on top of the clothes. I left my checkbook behind. Johnson had handed me a pile of cash when we’d sold the copper and transformers that we stole from the Wisconsin worksite. I went to the kitchen and looked around. I felt like taking a drawer and emptying the kitchen knives into my suitcase. I got a glass of water and left the drawer where it was. The Ruger .38 would be enough or it wouldn’t.

Ten minutes after I came in through the back door, I went out again, unsure when I would return, or if.

I drove east on Montrose, cut through an underpass and across Lake Shore Drive, and cruised into the lakefront park. A two-lane road curved around Montrose Harbor to a parking lot. I glided along the road, parked facing the gray water, got out, and walked toward the lake.

Waves swelled and sank as they approached the shore, then lipped up and splashed against the breakwater as if a storm had passed and the city was relaxing into peace. A single seagull floated forty yards off shore, rising and sinking on the waves. The sun was dipping behind the condo towers on the other side of the park. Long shadows from the leafless trees faded and disappeared into thicker, colder shadows.

I stared at the lake, watched the seagull rise and fall like the huge power of the lake was nothing, just a place to sit. When Corrine and I were married, she taught me to do breathing exercises when I came home so wound up that her fingers and lips couldn’t reach me. Now I breathed in and breathed out, timing my breath to match the rise and fall of the seagull.

My body relaxed. My mind eased.

I breathed in and breathed out.

I closed my eyes, tried to let go.

The seagull disappeared and, sharp as daylight, Raj appeared in my mind. He stood on the sidewalk outside my office. He stared at me as I sat in Bill Gubman’s police van. Alarm crossed his face.

“Damn,” I said and opened my eyes. Raj had seen me with Bill. What would he do? If he ran to Johnson or Monroe, I was done. They would hit me hard—from behind, on the side, any way they could take me out for good. And why wouldn’t Raj tell them? Because I’d pulled him off the barbed wire last night? Compared to the twenty-year stretch in prison that he would know Bill Gubman could give him, a couple of minutes in barbed wire was nothing.

But what if Raj didn’t run to Johnson or Monroe? I would need to move fast. Bill had told me I needed to start spreading the bad rumors thick if I wanted Monroe to move against Johnson. That seemed right. If I got to Monroe before Raj did, I might confuse everyone so much that no one would know who to trust.

I pulled out my cell phone. Bill also had suggested I talk to my lawyer. He’d given me worse advice plenty of times. Larry’s receptionist put my call through to his office, and he answered, “Where the hell are you?”

“At the beach,” I said. “Pretty afternoon. Girls in bikinis. Sand between the toes.”

He said nothing.

“Larry?”

“Are you drinking?”

“I wish.”

“You’re on TV again,” he said. “They say you burglarized a processing plant.”

“True.”

“What the hell are you doing, Joe?”

“I’m trying to figure that out.”

“I wouldn’t always say this but you should turn yourself in. You killed a man and now you’ve got a warrant out for your arrest. A cop looking for a promotion might decide to shoot you and save the time at trial.”

“Turning myself in is your best advice?”

“That or buy a ticket for Brazil.”

“I’ve heard good things about Brazil. Food’s better than in jail.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Thanks, Larry.” He’d given me nothing I could use but I couldn’t blame him for that.

“What are you going to do, Joe?” He sounded genuinely concerned.

“Like I said, I’m trying to figure that out.”

“As soon as you do, call me,” he said.

I promised I would and we hung up.

I stood by the lake and watched the seagull until the cold air seeped through my jeans and jacket, then stood awhile longer. My watch said the time was 4:05. The sun would set in about half an hour. Mom had asked me to come for dinner at 7:00. With a warrant out for my arrest and a police cruiser parked in front of my house, going home wasn’t an option. Going to my office was no better. A bar that I knew about cranked the heat and poured a deep enough shot to make it the warmest place on earth. But if I walked in the door I might stay forever. I went to my car, opened the trunk, and got out the bottle of Jim Beam. A long drink warmed my insides and made me shudder. It felt good. It also made me hate myself a little. I put the bottle away, got into the front seat, and started the engine. My Skylark was seventeen years old but the heater worked fine.

As the sun fell, I adjusted the seat all the way back and closed my eyes. For two hours, I drifted in and out of anxious dreams. I tried to picture myself in bed with Corrine but as I fell asleep she disappeared and a man hanging in barbed wire took her place. I tried to picture myself in bed with Lucinda, and she faded into a darkness where cops shot at each other. I tried Tina, the girl Raj offered me at The Spa Club. I imagined myself taking her from behind, imagined her yelling with pleasure as I fucked her but she disappeared too and I was alone and afraid.

*   *   *

MOM LIVED IN A
yellow bungalow on West Leland. A tall, skinny white pine grew in the front corner of the yard. Ever since an October storm, the top third of the tree had tilted to the south like it knew enough to run but couldn’t. Outside the front door, two boxwoods trimmed into little balls shimmered in the headlights as I pulled into the driveway.

I went around the side of the house, tapped on the back door, and let myself in. Mom stood at the stove, a small woman in blue jeans and a blue cotton work shirt. The house smelled of roasting meat and potatoes, with a sweet, sour edge of butter and onions. Mom stirred a pot of boiling broth. A plate of cooked pierogi stood on one side of the pot, a plate of uncooked pierogi on the other. The kitchen was warm, almost too comforting, and I resisted an impulse to back out of the house and run.

“I didn’t think you would come,” Mom said, her voice soft, her back to me.

“Of course I came,” I said, soft too. “I told you I would.”

She ladled the pierogi from the pot into a colander, turned to me. She screwed her lips to the side. “The police came by this afternoon. I’m supposed to call them if you’re here.”

I knew better than to ask but couldn’t help myself. “Did you tell them I was coming this evening?”

The spoon dropped from her hand and clattered on the floor. She came to me and hugged me like a woman four times her size. When she was done, she let me go and said, “You should be ashamed.” Her eyes were dry, her voice calm. She might have meant that I should be ashamed because I should have trusted her. She might have meant I should have avoided getting in trouble. She might have meant it all. I didn’t ask.

I pointed my thumb at the door to the living room, where Mom’s television was on, and said, “Is Jason in there?”

The faintest of smiles formed on her lips and she nodded. “Go see him.”

Jason was lying on the couch. He was wearing blue flannel pajamas. I thought I recognized them. I’d worn pajamas that looked like them when I was eleven years old.

“Hey,” I said, trying to put cheer into my voice.

“Hey,” he said. He kept his eyes on the television.

“How’re you feeling?”

Eyes still on the television. “Fine.”

I looked at the screen. Jennifer Grey was tangoing with Patrick Swayze in
Dirty Dancing.
Not the kind of movie Jason normally watched.

“That any good?”

He shrugged, gestured toward the kitchen. “She won’t let me watch the news.”

“Since when do you watch the news?” I said.

“Since you’re on it.” His eyes stayed on the television.

I picked up the remote from the table next to him and punched the power button. Jennifer Grey disappeared into a pinpoint of light. Jason still looked at the screen.

I stepped between him and the television, stooped, and looked at him eye to eye. “It’s going to be all right.”

“Of course it is,” he said. He didn’t believe it for a second. He gestured again toward the kitchen. “She said it would be too.”

I showed him my palms. “You think we’re lying?”

“I think you don’t know.” A smart eleven-year-old.

“You’re right, but I’m doing everything I can to make it okay.”

“Like committing a robbery?”

“I didn’t—” I stopped. He deserved the truth and I wished I knew it. “It’s complicated,” I said. “You’ve got to trust me.”

He looked at me for awhile, then said, “Why?”

“Because—” I started. “Just because.”

“That’s not a reason.”

“I know. But it’s all I’ve got.”

He nodded unhappily. “Now can I watch TV?”

I shook my head. “Where did you get those pajamas?”

He tipped his head toward the kitchen.

“Mom?” I called.

She came to the door.

I pointed at Jason and asked, “Are those—?”

She nodded. “Your old pajamas.”

“You’ve saved them for thirty-five years?”

“They were in perfectly good shape.”

“But thirty-five years?”

“I thought maybe one day I would have a grandson.”

“If you did, I would buy him pajamas myself.”

She turned back to the kitchen. “They were in perfect shape.”

Fifteen minutes later, Mom called us to the table. She’d served enough food to feed twelve—a platter of roasted pork, pierogi sautéed with onions, a bowl of mashed potatoes, red cabbage salad, sliced and buttered bread. Jason was half my size and usually ate twice as much as I did but tonight he ate slowly, carefully, chewing each bite far longer than he needed to. Mom watched him, concerned.

“Still uncomfortable to eat?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

Mom said, “The doctor says he’s fine with a regular diet.” She spooned potatoes onto his already full plate.

“Can I be done?” he said.

“Eat your dinner first,” Mom said.

He cut a small bite of pork, put it in his mouth, chewed a long time, then raised his napkin to his mouth and spit the pork into it. He slid his chair away from the table and wandered back into the living room. A few moments later, he turned on
Dirty Dancing
.

Mom stared at his plate, then looked at me. “Eat
your
dinner, for God’s sake.”

I did.

Afterward, I went to the living room and sat next to Jason on the couch. He was quiet and I kept my mouth shut, and after a little while he leaned against me and I put my arm around his shoulder and held him. We stayed like that for an hour, maybe more. Then Mom came in and said Jason should get some sleep.

I squeezed his shoulder and said, “Get well fast.”

He nodded and said, “I want to go back to your house with you.”

“Soon, okay?” I said. “Real soon.”

*   *   *

I DROVE TO THE
Patio Motel, a blue two-story strip with a big 1960s-style neon sign out front, left over from when Lincoln Avenue was a main route in and out of the city for trucks and tourists. Now the customers were mostly men and women who’d slipped away from their famlies and parked their cars side by side outside rooms with a single dim light on or none at all. A shoulder-high wooden fence blocked the parking lot from the street. I parked close to it to make my Skylark invisible—or almost—and went into the office.

The man behind the desk was bald and pronounced his
R
s like
W
s. He took my fifty-five dollars and gave me a room key. If he recognized me from the TV news, he didn’t show it.

The room had a
NO SMOKING
sign on the door and smelled like stale smoke. The walls could have used painting, the floors a new carpet, but the bed looked just right. I put my suitcase on a chair next to it, went back to the door and chained it, then peered out the window at the traffic and the nighttime city. The business next door advertised yoga tai-chi. Out front, the block-lettered Patio Motel sign glowed orange against the dark. Under the name of the motel, blue neon cursive added,
AN ADVENTURE IN LIVING
. If that wasn’t enough, another sign offered free movies.