A Bad Night's Sleep (7 page)

He glanced at a table of four men in their young thirties. Three had steak salads in front of them, one a piece of broiled fish. They wore blue jeans and shirts stretched tight over their biceps. “Wannabes,” Raj said.

He nodded toward another couple.

She had black kinky hair that she wore tied back and eyes so weirdly intense you could see their blue across the room. He wore black pants and a black silk T-shirt. His gray hair was short, his beard at a couple days’ stubble. He was no more than five foot four.

Raj said, “He’s the most dangerous man in the place.”

The woman kept her eyes on the short man when he spoke to her but when he looked down at his asparagus she gazed at the bartender, at me, at Raj.

Raj smiled at her.

She quickly turned away.

Raj said, “When a woman hangs out with a guy like him, she’s always watching for her next move in case she needs out fast. I’ve seen it.”

I started to feel sick the way you do when a whiskey drunk runs low, but I’d drunk plenty to keep going for another hour or two. I figured I was feeling the city and its rotting bodies, the ones rotting on the outside and the ones that looked like a hundred thousand dollars of plastic surgery on the outside but you knew the inside had gone bad.

Still, when a waitress brought our drinks, I tipped my glass back and downed the drink. It was top-shelf stuff, higher than I usually reached.

Across the room, a door opened behind the hostess station, and a man came out. He was wearing faded jeans and a heavy white cotton shirt. He moved with the ease of a man who owned everything around him. I hadn’t seen Earl Johnson in six or seven years but had no trouble recognizing him. He looked the same as when we went through the academy together in the 1980s. Some guys get lucky that way naturally. Some work hard at the weights, diets, and the pharmacy to stay lucky. I figured he was a natural.

The woman with the black kinky hair and intense eyes watched him as he crossed to our table, and she didn’t turn away when he flashed her a smile.

He flashed me the smile too as he sat at the table. “Joe,” he said with the warmth of an old friend. “It’s been a long time. Life treating you well?”

I turned to Raj and said, “The last time I saw Earl, I was still in the department but barely. Then I lost the job, cleaned myself up, got married and divorced, played dad to my nephew, and opened a detective business that’s kept my head above water most of the time. Now I’ve shot one of his friends and I’m drunk on his whiskey and mine. He knows damn well how life’s treating me.” Then I looked up at Johnson and said, “Couldn’t be better,” I said. “You?”

His smile held. “Can’t complain. I’m keeping busy.”

A waitress brought him a glass with a piece of lime and something clear in it. He hugged her around the waist. She gave him a smile and he let her go.

“You like this place?” he said.

I shrugged. “For an overpriced whorehouse, sure.”

He ignored that. “My friends and I have worked hard to get where we are.” The warmth dropped from his voice. “We’re not going to let someone like you come in and fuck things up. You understand that, right?”

“I understand what you are.”

He looked at me, patient. “You know, I’m a slow but steady learner. You and the other guys were way ahead of me in the academy. Everyone expected great things from you. Not me. I was a screwball. I’m sure you remember that. But I got through and I kept learning afterward. And now here I am, and there you are. Ironic, right?”

“I guess so.”

He stared hard at me. “Kind of sad too.”

“I suppose so. An honest jerk like me sitting at the table of an evil jerk like you—you’d think there’s no justice.”

He hit the table with his fist. The others in the lounge looked at him for a moment, then went back to their conversations. He spoke quietly. “Why did you meet with Bill Gubman this afternoon?”

“I already told your friends. Ask them.” I pointed my thumb at Raj. “Ask
him.
”

“I’m asking you.”

I said, “Bill and I go back as far as you and I do. But I respect and like him.”

“What did you tell him?”

I looked Johnson in the eyes and said, “I gave it all to him. I named you and Raj and the others. I gave him the dates and locations where you’ve boosted copper and appliances. I told him you’re running prostitutes and said where. I told him you’ve got plans to poke your sticky fingers into all the corners of the city. What do you think I told him?”

Johnson sighed. “Did you give him any of our names?”

“If I told Gubman an eighth of what I know about you, you would be in jail, not sitting in your fancy club pinching your waitresses. No, I didn’t give him your names.”

Johnson said, “Why not?”

“I don’t know,” I said and kept spinning the story. “I guess I’m tired of being fucked over.”

Johnson rubbed his fingers on his chin, eyed me. “I don’t trust you,” he said.

“Then you did learn something in all those years since the academy.”

Johnson shook his head and laughed liked he figured I was an idiot. Then he stood. “I’m watching you.”

I shrugged and lied again. “An eighth of what I know could bring you down.”

He shrugged too. “Just as long as it doesn’t.” He crossed the room and disappeared back through the door he’d come out of.

Raj whistled low. “Earl’s a dangerous guy to play with.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but he knows I can outplay him.”

Raj laughed like he figured the whiskey had me thinking I was tougher than I was but he leaned in and said, “Okay, my honest man, are you going to work with us?”

“I don’t think Johnson would like that.”

Raj grinned. “He left the table without shooting you. And he said he’s keeping an eye on you. That’s as good as a job offer.”

“I don’t work well with others,” I said.

“Finley’s worked out the numbers. He figures each of us should clear ten thousand a month. That’s for starters.”

I stared at him.

He said, “Are you expecting a paycheck from somewhere else?”

I shrugged. “Okay,” I said.

“Yeah?”

I nodded. “I’m in.”

*   *   *

RAJ SHOWED ME AROUND
the club. Beyond the lounge, it was like an upscale exercise club, with carpeted floors, painted steel railings, and the smell of chlorine, but no exercise equipment.

A hallway took us to a lobby where men and women relaxed on sofas or stood talking, most of the women in the khaki uniforms. The far wall had floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over Lake Shore Drive, across the beach, and to the lake.

Along a side wall stood a counter, staffed by a short-haired, healthy-faced woman whose khaki top barely contained her. A sign behind the counter listed the services available at the club. tension relief (40 minutes), $400. sensual awakening (75 minutes), $650. gentleman of leisure (2 hours), $700. couples spa (3 hours), $869. his and hers (1 hour), $750. group (75 minutes), $350 per person. other services negotiable. videographer available.

Another hallway led to doors cracked open an inch or two and other doors shut tight. Raj showed me inside the unoccupied rooms. One had a marble floor and marble wall tiles, a crescent-shaped hot tub, and a large cushioned bench. Another had three massage tables arranged side by side. A third had a thin gray mattress on a cheap metal bed frame, a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, and walls that needed paint. “Fulfill your dreams, whatever they are,” said Raj.

A blond-haired woman came out of a closed door and shut it behind her. She was barefoot and wore a short green sundress, the kind of thing that would slip off her shoulders and then she would have on nothing at all.

At the end of the hall, there was an emergency exit. Just before it, Raj used a key to let us into another room. The walls were lined with television monitors showing what was happening in the occupied rooms. A pock-faced man who looked about sixty sat on a desk chair with his feet propped on another chair, watching without interest, like the screens were airing a slow-moving ballgame. Two larger screens, off to the side, took video feeds from street level—in front of the building and behind.

Raj pointed his thumb at the screens. “If we ever get raided, the club can convert to legal massages real fast.”

When we finished the tour, Raj took me to another closed door. “Signing bonus,” he said.

“What?”

“For joining us. Go inside.”

I pointed my thumb at my chest. Me?

He nodded and said, “It’s been a tough couple of days.”

I waved away the offer. “That’s all right,” I said.

He smiled. “Come on. Her name is Tina.”

I went in.

The girl was lying on a white sofa. She was Eastern European—Russian, maybe Ukrainian. Her skin was pale, almost translucent. Her face was oval, her eyes the lightest blue, her hair so blond it was almost white. She was thin and had a wisp of white pubic hair and small breasts with dark nipples. She looked maybe seventeen or eighteen.

“Hi,” she said.

My voice caught in my throat. “Hi.”

She rolled over and sat at the edge of the sofa. She held her hand toward me, inviting me.

I wanted her badly. I stood where I was. “How old are you?” I asked.

She gave me a look. “How old do you want me to be?”

“I don’t—”

She got up and came to me, put her hands on my shoulders by my neck like she either planned to strangle me or wanted me to fuck her. She didn’t try to strangle me.

I said. “I have a wife.”

Her eyes narrowed and her lips got mischievous. “You don’t have ring on your finger.”

“I have an ex-wife.”

She looked confused.

I said, “It’s complicated.”

“Yes, complicated,” she agreed, and moved her hands from my shoulders to my chest, caressing down toward my belt.

I stopped her hands with mine, held them to my lips, kissed her fingers. “I’m sorry,” I said.

She looked angry for a moment but it passed. “Your loss,” she said, and turned to the door.

“Yeah, my loss,” I said, but she was already gone.

NINE

I LIVED ON THE
Northwest side in a house I bought after Corrine and I split up. I got there after midnight. My car tires crunched on the asphalt alley and I parked outside the garage, then crossed under an old elm tree to my back porch. An October storm had knocked the last leaves off the elm and now the branches hung bare in the moonlight.

I let myself in and flipped on the kitchen light. For the past three months, ever since moving in with me, my nephew Jason had run in and welcomed me home at the end of an afternoon. Even when I’d come in at midnight, he’d stumbled out of his room to say hello. But Corrine had picked him up for school on the morning after the Southshore shootings, and now he should be sleeping at my mom’s house in the bed I used as a kid.

Still, I called his name. I couldn’t help myself.

When Corrine picked him up, Jason had left a half-eaten bowl of Cheerios in the sink. The milk had dried and the Cheerios had glued together and made a cake more solid than anything else in my life at the moment.

I left the bowl and went to the shower, stripped, and cranked the faucet full throttle so the pins of water hurt. I needed the hurt, though I knew it wouldn’t wash all the dirt off of me. I stood for awhile and took it, then soaped myself and let the steaming water rinse me. I closed my eyes. The Russian girl at The Spa Club flashed in my mind. I wanted her and knew I shouldn’t have her. Sex at The Spa Club was a bit of Arizona for Bob Monroe, and I figured it would help me escape too for an hour or so. Two hours with the
Gentleman of Leisure
package. But then what? I would be back where I was, sweating in front of Corrine, trying to explain myself.

I knew I should run away from Johnson and his crew. If one of his helpers threatened Corrine, Jason, and my mom, then I should get them out of town and go with them. It wouldn’t be easy but I could do it.

Still, I’d laid the groundwork for the lies Bill Gubman wanted me to build. Bob Monroe was interested in what I knew about Johnson. Now I could start hinting that Johnson was freelancing and keeping the profits for himself. I could fill in the details later—places, times, amounts. Bill Gubman said he had a list of them that Johnson would have no alibi for, and phony bank accounts too. I could make the lies convincing if I moved slow and kept my head straight. I could help Bill make Johnson’s crew self-destruct quietly.

But why should I?

Bill said I could redeem myself. If I did, though, I would be back in the place I was trying to escape. There was nothing I liked about where I was.

Except for Corrine. She was in that place too and I still wanted her.

And Jason. He also was there.

I laughed out loud the way a guy who lives in a cage laughs, half crazy, half to keep from going crazier. Then I turned off the water. The heat and sting wouldn’t cure me. The only thing I could do was make the cage my own, make it as comfortable as I could since I was going to have to live in it.

I climbed into bed and after awhile I slept. An hour later I startled awake, worried about Corrine and Jason. Mom could take care of herself, I figured. I told myself that Corrine had been okay without me before we met and after we divorced, and Jason was safe in bed at Mom’s house. But I still couldn’t sleep. So I pictured the Russian girl coming to me at The Spa Club, imagined her face, which hadn’t hardened yet, her nickel-sized nipples, the tuft of pubic hair that rose from her like a breath of smoke. I thought of the sweetness she’d offered me.

Eventually I dreamed. I was sitting at my office desk looking for a letter. Just a piece of paper with words on it. But I knew in the dream that my life depended on my finding it. I checked the desk drawers, the file cabinets, the carpet under the desk. The letter was gone. I got frantic and looked for my gun instead, stuck my fingers into an empty holster, checked the desk and file cabinets, patted my pockets. Gone too. The phone started ringing. Like it was in front of me on the desk, but there was no phone on the desk. It rang and I knew everything depended on my hearing the voice on the other end.